Take A Stand: The Broken Mirror
by Garouge Faux
Summary: Part 3 of the TAS series. 5 years after superheroes came to the aid of Zootopia a strange weather phenomenon reeks havoc across the city by giving a small number of mammals superpowers but when some of these mammals start vanishing under violent circumstances Chief Judy Wilde and Mayor Nick Wilde enlist the help of Team Ceartais to bring these mammals home. Many OCs, Wildehoppskids
1. Prologue

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with the third and final instalment of my Zootopia Fanfiction series Take a Stand, and seeing as it is the 3rd story it is strongly advised that you read Take a Stand and it's sequel Star of Ceartais or else you'll have no idea what's going on and who on earth all these OCs are. Also be on the lookout for Ziegelzeig's spin off fanfiction 'Prey Upon' to learn what happened in the five years between Star of Ceartais and this story; The Broken Mirror. Now this will be a 40-50 chapter fic and it will update every monday with the help of the awesome Take A Stand Dev team who edit, help with plot and create characters, produce art and run the discord server, so thank you all for once again helping me with this final story in this series. One final thing here's a cast list of the returning main characters to refresh people's memories and to credit their creators...

Judy Wilde, 46- Chief of Precinct 1, mother to her two beloved daughters and has a dumb fox for a husband.

Nick Wilde, 54- Mayor of Zootopia who deputised superheroes to help in Zootopia five years ago after a string of domestic terrorist attacks.

Luna Wilde, 27 - A gifted surgeon and millionaire socialite, Nick's daughter and Judy's step daughter, this vixen was trained by her outlaw grandparents to be the vigilante archer; Andraste.

Robyn Wilde-Savage, 21 - The youngest daughter of Nick and Judy, this fiery tempered hybrid gained super powers following an experimental procedure with medical nano machines to help rid her of a major case of sepsis. Her gifts of enhanced strength and accelerated healing led to her to becoming the heroine; The Undying Scarlet.

Hannah Wilde-Savage, 21- Daughter of Jack and Skye, this striped hybrid married her childhood crush, Robyn, at the end of Star of Ceartais. She lost her eyesight in an explosion triggered by a massive earthquake that shook Zootopia but with the same nano-machines procedure as her wife she was gifted with enhanced senses, bio-electric mapping and lightning fast reflexes turning her into the blind badass gunslinger; Bullet.

Kodi Jones, 21, created by helthehatter - This wolf has been the best friend of both Hannah and Robyn since kindergarten, the adopted son of the songstress Gazelle and her husband Wade this guy has a big heart but his love of she-wolves often lands him in trouble. When Robyn and Hannah gained their superpowers he was determined to help out his friends and did so by becoming the tech-tricking hero known as The Mage.

Kion Priderock, 24- A lion who was dragged into the world of superpowers when looking for his missing sister Kiara, he was captured and experimented on in an illegal experiment leaving with the ability to transform into a 13ft tall titan known as Roar.

Olivia Dawson, 27 - This engineer and billionaire CEO of pharmaceutical giant Dawson tech this little mouse leads a double life as the the leader of the Superhero team Ceartais. In her advanced combat mech, code named Spitfire, she has served Zootopia as heroine for over a decade and is the brains and money behind the team.

Alice Wilde, 29 created by Ziegelzeig - This French/Japanese doe rabbit was once an enemy of team ceartais as the assassin Ronin but things got complicated when she found herself falling in love with the heroine Andraste. If you want to learn more about Alice's backstory, please read Zeigelzeig's spin off story Prey Upon'.

Aleks Rojek, created by senny74 - Originally a SWAT cop recruited from the Polish police force this silver fox is now working for the Major Crimes Bureau as Team Ceartais official liaison with authorities and leads a strike team that deals with 'powered' criminals. The one time boyfriend of Luna Wilde, Aleks is now a happily married father of twins.

Zoe Nightfall-Rojek, created by lisiczka-zorua - A corporal in a joint US/UK special forces team dubbed Camelot, this charming and chipper Indian flying fox doesn't have the usual demeanour of a soldier yet has stopped terror attacks across the globe, stationed at a base just outside Zootopia this brave bat never shies away from action. She is married to Aleks and they have two hybrid children together.

Ok so without further ado let's get cracking with this new fanfiction...)

 **Prologue**

It was just after 10am in Savannah Central, June had just begun and the scorching Californian Summer was unforgiving for the mammals who lived and worked in the centre of Zootopia. Chief Judy Wilde had the air conditioning turned up to max in her cruiser as she waited for the traffic light to go green, she was on her way to city hall for the weekly briefing with her friend and boss Commissioner Mason Bogo and also her beloved husband, Mayor Nick Wilde. If it wasn't for the company of the meeting she would fake being ill just to avoid it, these endless meetings and constant paperwork had dampened her spirits in the last few years. It had been getting slower ever since The Drowned, a fanatical domestic terrorist group, had been defeated by the deputised superheroes of Zootopia; Team Ceartais. Five years had past since that victory and the city had become a much safer place since the ZPD and Ceartais worked together to bring criminals to justice, the crime rate was at a record low, the prison population was also low and the city was finally rebuilt after the double disaster of an earthquake and a tsunami had destroyed a third of Zootopia. Judy knew she musn't grumble about things being so good but the 46 year old rabbit doe wanted a little bit of excitement in this routine of admin and paperwork, and the universe was about to grant her wish.

" **Dispatch to all cars in Savannah Central,"** The ZPD dispatcher's voice crackled through the cruiser's radio " **proceed to Zootopia first national bank on Acacia Avenue, robbery in progress, possible hostage situation."**

Judy grinned and picked up the handpiece before replying "Copy that dispatch, Wilde is on route." She then quickly set the handpiece down, turned on the sirens and lights before speeding through the red light towards the bank robbery. A few minutes later Judy pulled up outside the bank where half a dozen other police cruisers were already parked with the majority of the cops pointing their tranq pistols at the closed double doors of the bank. Judy got out of her cruiser and made her way over to the two most familiar faces among her brothers and sisters in blue; Nala and Clawhauser. "Hey guys." Judy chirped not fazed by the dangerous situation.

"Hey Bun Bun, decided to slum it with us common folk?" Clawhauser teased, knowing he didn't need to be formal with his friend of twenty plus years.

"Well I was in the neighbourhood and I figured this is much more exciting than another meeting." Judy replied, scanning the area with her eyes.

"Typical Judy." Nala chuckled.

"So, what's the situation?" Judy queried.

"Knight was first on scene, so he should tell you." Nala answered, waving over to a European wolf.

The wolf was in his mid-twenties, dressed in a standard ZPD uniform, his fur was dark but had a bluish hue to it, he flicked the safety on his tranq pistol before jogging over to his superior officers. "Ma'am." Arthur Knight nodded down at the chief.

"Tell me what happened here, Knight." Judy instructed, she knew Arthur was a diligent cop, it was partly the reason why she hand picked him from the European recruitment drive.

"Right, well I was getting a coffee out of the Snarlbucks across the street when I heard gunshots coming from the bank, I raced over and peeked through the window. It's a twelve-mammal team armed with assault rifles, they've got about thirty hostages. When I saw what these guys were packing I called for backup." Arthur explained quickly.

"Good, if you went in there solo you would've been toast." Judy commented "Anything else I need to know?"

"Yeah I saw a hyena with a dyed green mane, he matches the description of that other bank robber from last week." Arthur informed.

"The red and black diamonds, those sons of bitches." Nala tutted, knowing the green maned hyena was known Lou Quinzel, a member of the notorious biker gang; the red and black diamonds.

"Those bikers have moved up to the big leagues since that white bat took over." Judy mused, the red and black diamonds had been the prime suspects in four other bank robberies across the city in the last couple of months but they were usually snatch and grab incidents, they never took hostages and never used more than three mammals to storm a bank, this was way out of the ordinary for these thieves. The only thing that seemed normal was the fact that this robbery was happening mid-morning, like all the others, Judy theorised it was due to the fear of Ceartais who had a reputation for coming out at night.

"No demands have been made yet, so are we sitting tight and waiting for SWAT to arrive?" Clawhauser asked, his eyes still on the door.

"Yeah but why don't we call some more theatrical backup." Judy smirked, holding up a cheap burner phone given to her by Team Ceartais.

"You really think they'll come? They're probably been out all night and are in bed." Nala pointed out.

"Spitfire told me that the team has been trying to shut down the black and red diamonds for months, I don't think they'll pass up the chance." Judy countered, while selecting the only saved number on the phone and pressing the phone to her ear.

After a few seconds of ringing a female voice answered **"The grand oak tea rooms, would you like to reserve a table?"**

Judy recognised the voice instantly as her eldest kit, Luna, she smiled before answering with the password "Cream tea for two."

" **Good morning, Chief Wilde."** Andraste responded.

"The black and red diamonds are robbing the Zootopia first national bank in Savannah Central Andraste, we need you and the others to come help the police." Judy got to the point, making sure to call Luna by her hero name.

" **Don't worry about it Chief, we're on the case."** Andraste replied happily.

"Great, how long before you can get here?" Judy asked.

" **Oh we're already here."** Andraste answered cheekily.

"Huh? How?" Judy sounded.

" **Look up."** Andraste prompted.

Judy looked up to the roof of the three-storey bank to see the green clad archer waving at her, "How the hell did you get here so fast?" Judy gawped.

" **We'll tell you later, just look out for one of my firework arrows, when you see that get your officers to help get the hostages out of here."** Andraste instructed, before darting out of sight.

"Will do. Good luck in there." Judy smiled with pride, knowing that the team could handle these bikers.

000

Lou Quinzel had a smug grin on his face as he looked at the stacks of hundred-dollar bills bursting out of the several sports bags, this was the largest bank in the city and he made sure his gang had emptied the cash draws completely while his twin brother Bud and their boss was in one of the offices getting the real score. This bank was built in the early 1900s and had a lot of balconies and arches akin to architecture of the time, so he had four snipers stationed at each corner to be on the lookout for any SWAT cops trying to crash the party, while five other bikers patrolled the area whilst keeping an eye on the hostages. Lou glanced at his watch, it was six minutes since this robbery began, it'd be about another four before SWAT arrived so he needed to make sure they stall before they stormed the place. He got out a folded piece of paper from his jacket with the gang's pre-written demands and conditions on them before eyeing the sitting and shaking hostages, he spotted a young ferret father and his toddler son in a stroller and spoke "Hey Ferret, you and your boy are getting out of here."

"R-really!?" The Ferret gasped.

"Yeah I need someone to hand over our demands and this isn't the best environment for a kid." Lou reasoned, he was a criminal but he wasn't a monster "So come on, on your feet."

The Ferret scuttled over while pushing the stroller and was handed the demands by the hyena, the demands were as follows 'ANY ATTEMPT TO STORM THE BANK WILL RESULT IN HOSTAGES BEING SHOT, THE DOORS ARE RIGGED WITH EXPLOSIVES SO COPS WILL DIE TOO. WE REQUIRE THREE SEPARATE CARS FOR OUR ESCAPE, IF ANY TRACKERS ARE PLANTED ON THEM WE WILL KILL THE HOSTAGES, IF THIS DEMAND ISN'T MET IN THIRTY MINUTES WE WILL KILL A HOSTAGE EVERY TWO MINUTES.'

Lou walked over to the front door with the father and son, he then instructed one of his underlings "Ok deactivate the explosives for a sec."

The biker, a female camel, nodded and took a remote out of her pocket and pressed one of the buttons, the digital displays on the pair of bombs on either side of the door read 'Disarmed.' She then opened the door and hollered "You've got a hostage coming out, he's got a kid with him!"

The Ferret cautiously stepped out with his son before the camel hastily closed the doors again and reactivated the explosives. Lou got out his radio and pressed the call button "Ok Boss, the demands have been handed over, how are things on your end?"

" **All good here, good ol' Bud has nearly cracked the Bank Manager's personal safe, we should be done in five minutes so get the guys ready for a speedy exit**." A high pitched female voice responded.

While this conversation was going on a lone shadow dropped silently from an air vent, right behind a biker sniper in the top left corner. Andraste grinned playfully at the oblivious Kudu, as she stepped closer she got out one of her tranq arrows and pierced his left butt cheek causing him to fall unconscious in an instant, she managed to catch his body and lay him softly on the marble flooring so it wouldn't make a noise. "Top left corner clear." Andraste spoke into her comm link.

Andraste could already see her sister putting a female cougar in a sleeper hold on the other balcony, The Undying Scarlet let the unconscious feline fall on the floor before confirming "Top right's clear." The 21-year-old heroine now poised for a real fight with the biker down below.

On the opposite side of the bank sliding perched on a large art deco light fixture was the black clad markswoman Bullet, she aimed her twin silenced pistols at the two remaining snipers, detecting their shapes and the sound of their hearts, she pulled the trigger and both bikers fell into slumber from the gunslinger's special sleeper ammo. "All clear on my end, Yurei you can reach the trigger woman now." Bullet relayed, already sensing the small form approaching the camel with the remote.

The female camel was leaning on one of the stone pillars near the front doors, she let her rifle hang loose from its strap while she rummaged through her pockets for a pack of gum, but as she was doing this she didn't notice the small white figure sliding down the pillar and landing on her hump. The Camel was about to shout out but was halted by the cold touch of a shuriken against her throat "Don't move, don't speak and don't do anything reckless unless you want to join me in the afterlife." A soft French voice warned.

The Camel stiffened with fright, knowing exactly who was talking, her brown eyes turned to see the figure had stepped onto her shoulder all while keeping the shuriken on her throat. A petrified whimper escaped the biker camel's lips as she gazed upon the ghostly figure on her shoulder; it was a white doe bunny wearing a sneaking suit the same colour as her fur, a katana in a red scabbard hung from her belt, her left arm was cybernetic and was mounted with various weapons and gadgets, but the camel wasn't concerned with the bunny's weapons, she was too focused on her face. The lower half of the bunny's face was covered by a white mask with the shape of a rabbit skull printed in black and then there was her eyes; there was no white, there was no iris or pupil, the entire surfaces of the doe's eyes were black as a pit in hell. "Do you know who I am?" The Bunny asked with a whisper.

"Y-you're Yurei, the ghost of T-Team Ceartais…" The Camel whispered back, her mouth losing all moisture from fear.

"Correct, now do you know what I do to criminals who vex me?" Yurei asked back, leaning in closer.

"Y-y-you torture their souls and make them see demons." The Camel answered, her body trembling.

"Also correct, now one more question; how are you going to prevent me doing that to you?" Yurei played, loving the fact that these urban legends about her had spread so far.

The Camel answered by holding up the remote, pressing the deactivation switch and passing it to Yurei "P-please don't hurt me."

"Don't worry mortal, I'm feeling merciful." Yurei replied before blowing some blue coloured dust in her face, the camel slumped down the pillar and fell into a deep slumber. Yurei had to suppress a laugh at how easy the camel was to manipulate, she then whispered into her comm "Ok Mage, the lookouts are taken care of, time to start the show."

Back near the cash desk Lou was anxiously waiting for word from his boss and Bud when he heard a cheery voice ask "Is this your card?" Lou spun around to see The Mage, stood in front of the hostages doing magic tricks.

"What the!? How the hell did you get in here?!" Lou blasted, the other bikers turned and saw what the green maned hyena was on about.

Mage turned around, shuffled the cards and smirked "Magic, of course. Would you like to see a trick?"

"Shoot this dipshit!" Lou barked, raising his weapon.

Before any of the bikers could pull the trigger, Mage shouted _"Praesidium!"_ a gold transparent dome encased Mage and the hostages as the bikers fired shot after shot, only to find the bullets bouncing off. The bikers stopped firing and stood there with slack jaws as Mage yelled "OO-DE-LALLY!"

Andraste took this as her signal and fired off a firework arrow at the ceiling, the loud bangs and colourful pyrotechnics distracting the bikers and alerting for the team and the cops to move in. The front door was forced open with a shoulder barge from a hulking giant lion with white fur and red mane, Roar gave a low growl before charging at a bull elephant biker. Spitfire smashed through the back window and flew to the light fixture to pick up Bullet "Need a lift?" she asked.

Bullet hopped on the mech's back then scanned the area below with her senses and said "I may need something more than my pistols."

"One boomstick coming up." Spitfire chimed, the mech's back plate opening and revealing Bullet's rock-salt shotgun, Spitfire then swooped down and let Bullet jump off to engage her foes "You guys take care of these, me and Andraste will take care of Bud and his boss!"

"Gotcha'!" Scarlet replied, who was trading blows with a hippo.

Yurei was dodging gunfire as she unsheathed her katana and flicked a switch strapped to the hilt that made the blade look like it was ablaze with a blue flame, but in reality, it was a kinetic energy field that surrounded the blade designed to look like flames by Spitfire, one blow from this would knock someone out but wouldn't kill them seeing as the blade wouldn't actually touch Yueri's enemies. "Scarlet, homerun manoeuvre." Yurei shouted, holding her blade like a baseball bat.

"On it!" Scarlet grinned devilishly, drop kicking the hippo in the gut and sending him staggering back towards Yurei to leap up and strike the hippo in the head, knocking him out.

Lou could see the plan unravelling before his very eyes, and it was all that smug wolf Mage's fault, he got a grenade out of his jacket and smirked "Let's see if you're magic can handle this!"

"Oh crap…" Mage muttered, knowing the forcefield created by Spitfire could only handle gunfire.

But before he could call on his teammates for assistance, a tranq dart went into the neck of Lou Quinzel, he dropped the pinned grenade and fell face first onto the marble floor. Mage looked to where the shot had come from and saw Officer Knight along with his fellow ZPD colleagues streaming into the bank. "Are the hostages ok, Mage?" Arthur asked, quickly reloading his weapon.

"Thanks to you." Mage grinned, making sure to keep the forcefield up.

On the top floor of the bank, Andraste was running for the bank manager's office and soon enough Spitfire was flying next to her "We've got them trapped." Spitfire said, her synthesised voice couldn't mask her confidence.

"Confident, aren't we?" Andraste bantered, eyeing the office at the end of the corridor "Aren't you the one who always says 'Don't jinx it'?"

"You realise that now you've jinxed us." Spitfire countered, landing on the floor and reading her wrist mounted tranq dart launchers.

"Oh well, it wouldn't be fun if it was too easy." Andraste smiled, slowing down as she got closer to the door.

Spitfire opened the door with a powerful kick and was instantly met with a hail of gunfire, the bullets pinging off the bulletproof armour, once all the ammo was spent and the gun smoke faded Andraste slunk into the room and aimed a Taser arrow at the pink maned hyena; Bud Quinzel who was holding an empty machine gun "Drop the gun, Bud." Andraste warned, having no qualms about giving the biker an electric shock.

"Damn it…" Bud vented, tossing the gun on the floor.

"And where's your boss?" Andraste pressed.

"You think she'd come here? She's too important to risk her neck on this job." Bud lied unconvincingly.

"Is that so? Then why does my thermal imaging see a bat shaped figure in that safe over there?" Spitfire called out the lie, pointing to the safe on the wall with its door slightly ajar.

"Oh god frickin' damn it!" A high-pitched Brooklyn accent whined, out of the safe flew a Honduran white bat wearing a black and red biker jacket with a matching skirt, she landed on the desk and sassed "I thought you creeps only came out at night."

"That's rich, coming from a bat." Andraste chuckled.

"Harley Isley, we meet at last." Spitfire spoke to the gang leader.

"And you two are Tin Can and Wannabe-Hood, right?" Harley threw back.

"Wow, your reputation for childish jokes proceeds you. Maybe they'll throw a comedy night at the state pen so you can test out your material." Andraste taunted.

"Wait before you hand us over to the cops I gotta' know, how did you know we were hitting this place?" Harley questioned.

"The ZPD only thought the only pattern to your crimes was hitting banks in the morning but we traced the customers of the other banks you hit and there was a lot of money that wasn't supposed to be there, in other words you were hitting mob banks." Spitfire explained.

"And the only mob banks left in the city are both in Savannah central, this one and the other next to the stock market building, so we had Roar and Spitfire stationed there and the rest of us waiting here." Andraste continued, before walking over to the safe and taking out a faded green notebook "And this was the real prize; the green ledger. The account numbers and passwords to every illegal offshore account that is funnelled through this bank, at least a $300 million score to a thief."

"But how did you know we would hit today!?" Harley hissed, frustrated that her big payday was never coming.

"Simple; your biker gang owns a utility repair company as a front, we hacked the company's system and found works permits for sewer maintenance under Savannah central today. Which means you were planning on using the sewer system under this bank to escape." Spitfire informed "So all those demands you gave over were just to distract the cops, I have to say it was a brilliant plan."

"You can kiss my ass, robot!" Harley snapped, launching into the air quickly and trying to fly out over Spitfire's head only to be swatted down by Andraste's bow.

"Why is there always a runner?" Andraste sniggered down at the groaning gang leader.

000

Ten minutes later the cops had cleared the bank, the hostages were being tended to by officers and paramedics, the red and black diamonds were loaded into paddy wagons and Team Ceartais were talking to Chief Wilde before the inevitable talk to the journalists already waiting behind the police barrier. "Maybe with this book as evidence you can send the white-collar criminals running this bank to jail." Andraste finished her explanation of the situation to her mother, handing over the green ledger.

"I should've known you guys would be ahead on this." Judy smiled, putting the ledger in an evidence bag.

"Well I haven't slept in 36 hours but it was worth it." Scarlet yawned, she had been on patrol with her wife Bullet the night before.

"Don't worry, it's me and Yurei on patrol tonight, you can sleep all day and all night if you want." Roar assured.

" _Oui,_ but first we must face them." Yurei groaned glancing over at the journalists already shouting questions over, the lapin heroine wasn't fond of camera being put in her face.

"Let's face our adoring public." Bullet laughed nervously, leading the group over to the press gathered at the barrier whose questions got louder the closer they approached.

Spitfire pointed at a familiar face in the crowd of reporters, a young antelope photojournalist who always took the best photos of the team "Yes, the young lady with the camera."

"Sasha Jones, Barkfeed. Is it true you've rounded up the leaders of red and black diamonds; Harley Isley and the Quinzel brothers?" Sasha asked with a smile.

"With the help of the fine officers of the ZPD, the senior members of this criminal gang that gives a bad name to genuine motorcycle clubs have been arrested." Spitfire answered diplomatically before pointing at another journalist this one a male pine marten "You, sir."

"Geoff Wedgewood, The Zootopian Herald. How did Team Ceartais get to the crime scene so fast?" The Pine Marten asked.

Scarlet spoke up and covered this question "We can't reveal all the tricks of our trade I'm afraid."

An attractive ewe in a designer suit then piped in "Jennifer Park, ZNN. Mage, reports from the hostages say that you used your powers to save their lives, how does it feel to be given such high praise?"

Mage stepped forward and answered "Well I hate to disappoint but I'm not the hero of this scenario," He then walked up to an oblivious Officer Knight who was chatting to Clawhauser, put a paw on his shoulder and declared "this is the wolf you should be calling a hero, this guy saved mine and all those hostages lives when he knocked Lou Quinzel who was about to throw a grenade at us."

"Wait, w-what!?" Arthur babbled, caught completely off guard. Suddenly all of the reporters' attention was on the wolf cop and barking questions at him.

Bullet laughed at the sounds of the flustered cop before feeling her body shiver "What…" she muttered, unfamiliar with the sensation.

"Bullet?" Scarlet sounded, resisting the urge to call her wife by a pet name.

The icy feeling washed over the blind markswoman again accompanied by a super low rumble that reached her ears "Can't you hear that?" Bullet asked, sounding afraid.

"Hear what?" Scarlet wondered, concerned by the worried expression on Bullet's muzzle.

CRACK! A booming cracking sounded in the sky above them, sending a shock wave that made mammals stumbles and the air's temperature plummeted close to freezing. Everyone looked up to see that the blue sky had been blanketed by dark clouds with wisps of purple coursing through them "What the hell is that!?" Spitfire yelled.

"Don't ask me, you're the scientist." Roar responded, feeling a sense of dread creeping towards his heart.

"Is it a typhoon or some sort of storm?" Yurei asked over the screams and shouts of civilians.

"Last time I checked storm clouds aren't purple." Mage replied, glancing over at Sasha who was already taking photos of the phenomenon.

"Look there's probably some reasonable expl- wait! Is there something coming out of the clouds?" Andraste began to reason before spotting dozens of dark purple balls of mist descending to the surface with rapid speed.

"Everyone, get to cover!" Judy commanded, as the first ball of mist reached the ground only to change course and go into the crowd of journalists who screamed as it struck them, but none of them were hurt, it appeared that the mist was harmless.

"It may be a chemical weapon! Don't let it touch you!" Spitfire shouted, opening the doors to the bank so the cops and journalists could get shelter.

"Chief, come on!" Scarlett yelled at her mother, who was busy looking around the crowd.

"I'm not going until all my cops are in there!" Judy justified, barely audible over the screams.

Then in a split-second Scarlet eyed a ball of purple mist, about to collide with her Mom, Scarlet's body acted on impulse, she dove forward and tackled Judy out of the way only for the ball of mist to hit her in the head…

Scarlet was no longer on the street, she couldn't see or hear the cries of frightened mammals, all she could see the purple mist. She tried to wave the thick mist away from her face but stopped when she saw her paws…but they weren't her paws, they weren't paws at all. In their place was a pair of furless pink hands, with no paws pads or claws only small orange freckles dotted her hands and her forearms but at least her wedding and engagement rings were still the right place. Scarlet was a mix of afraid and curious and was about to look at the rest of her body when...

"Scarlet, wake up" Bullet cried.

Scarlet's navy-blue eyes fluttered open to find she was laying on her back on the marble floor of the bank, with her Mom and the rest of the team huddled around her "Guys?"

"Oh, sweet cheese and crackers!" Judy exclaimed, putting a paw to her chest "Thank god, you're ok."

Bullet hugged her wife tightly and softly cried into her neck. Scarlet returned the hug while looking around the room and saw dozens of mammals taking shelter in the bank before asking in a groggy voice "What happened?"

"You got hit by one of those mist things, you've been out for thirty minutes." Mage told, glad that his friend was ok.

"Wait…the purple sky, is it still…" Scarlet tried to ask, but she felt physically exhausted.

"It stopped a few minutes ago, it's blue skies out there now." Yurei answered, her tone cautious.

"How are you feeling? Are you in any pain?" Andraste asked, the surgeon couldn't help but tend to her little sister.

"I'm fine, I just saw…" Scarlet began, looking at her paws and seeing they were back to normal.

Bullet wiped away her tears and pressed "What did you see?"

Scarlet looked back at the gunslinger's crying face and answered honestly "I don't know."

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! What's happening? What's going on? What did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review. And to find out what happens next you don't have to wait long, I'm uploading chapter 1, right after this. So please review and c ya very soon...)


	2. The Little Hero

(AN/ Told ya' the next update would be quick, so without further ado let's get cracking with chapter 1...)

 **Chapter 1- The little hero.**

Most mammals tolerate their jobs, some others despise their occupation and a very small percentage love their job, Robyn Wilde-Savage was one of those lucky few. While she did spend two or three nights a week patrolling Zootopia's streets as The Undying Scarlet her day job as a mechanic was therapeutic in comparison. The fact the she owned half of the auto shop was also a satisfying feeling. The other half belonging to her best friend and fellow super hero Kodi, as teenagers the two friends had been skilled in auto mechanics both as a hobby and as elective subject at high school and by the time they had graduated high school, they were versed in repairing both traditional engines and electric. Robyn and Kodi's grades were not enough to get them into college and neither really wanted to go anyway so when they heard that the old garage that Robin senior and Little John had worked at in their youth was up for sale, the two friends saw an opportunity. They got some start up money from Luna and Gazelle and bought the auto shop, which they renamed 'The Arrow Garage', in tribute to the departed archer and within a few months they were in profit and quickly paid back the start up money, three years later they were the most trusted garage in the Sherwood borough and they had hired three more mechanics to work under them.

Robyn had just finished taking a payment from a satisfied customer and was about to get to work on a van's brakes when a familiar voice came on the radio " **Good morning Zootopia, this is Hannah Wilde-Savage and this 'Brunch Banter' on BarkFeed radio, where we talk about the current events from around the world."** Robyn couldn't help but smile every time she heard her wife come on the radio, a job the striped hybrid had held for just a few months. Hannah went to college after graduation and majored in journalism while taking media production as a minor. Despite her blindness she graduated with honours and thanks to Sasha Jones, who was BarkFeed's top photojournalist, she was able to have an interview with the eccentric owner of BarkFeed; Alex Boehm, who was so impressed with Hannah he offered her the 11 – 1 spot on his fledgling talk radio station. Robyn would always take her tea break when Hannah's show began out of habit and it was nice to hear her voice, the ginger hybrid flicked on the kettle in the corner of the garage and listened to the radio **"Coming up on the show we have renowned psychologist Dr. Thrash talking about his new book, Bianca and Bernard Gabor will be here talking about this year's Rescue Aid Society Christmas appeal but we open today's show on a sombre note. Even though it is the first week of December and everyone is getting into the Holiday spirit we need to spare a thought for those affected by the 'Purple Sky' incident. It is six months to the day when the skies above Zootopia turned purple and for half an hour the city was attacked by mysterious balls of mist, after all this time, the government will still not give the public answers. Add the fact that after the 'Purple Sky' incident reports of mammals with 'Powers' comparable to Team Ceartais, many blame this phenomenon as the cause. Even more worrying is that 17 mammals who have displayed signs of 'Powers' have vanished in mysterious and sometimes violent circumstances leading many to believe that the government is responsible for these disappearances. So I implore you, as you get ready for the Holidays spare a thought for the families affected by the 'Purple Sky' incident."**

"You're hopeless, boss."A voice chuckled at Robyn. Robyn turned to face one of her employees, a Swedish Brown Bear called Oggie, he was the biggest mammal in the garage and tended to work on the larger vehicles. He was replacing a headlight on a jeep as he added "You still act like a newlywed even though you've been married five years, it's your wife's voice, get over it."

"You're only saying that because you don't have a romantic bone in your body." Robyn parried, pouring her and Oggie some tea.

"I am romantic when I need to be but you and your missus take it to a whole new level." Oggie replied, finishing with the headlight and stepping over to collect his mug of tea.

"Hannah's the more romantic one, really." Robyn shrugged "I mean do you remember on Valen-"

Suddenly an out of breath and shirtless Kodi came bursting into the garage, ran right past Robyn and Oggie, opened the trunk of the nearest car, dove in and closed it behind him. "What the hell?" Oggie mouthed, confused by the wolf's behaviour.

Robyn read the situation and went over, sat on the trunk and prompted the bear "Wait for it…"

A few seconds later an obese male wolf in his fifties came through the garage's entrance and angrily panted "Hey, did you see a black and white wolf run through here?"

Robyn then easily lied "Yeah, he just burst in here and ran out the back door."

"G-God damn it." The Angry Wolf wheezed, his paws on his knees.

"What did he do?" Oggie enquired.

"I caught that flea-ridden bastard in bed with my daughter." The furious father growled.

"Oh now I remember his face, that wolf has got a reputation." Robyn played.

"What kind of reputation?" The Angry Wolf asked back, still breathing heavily.

"Well I've heard wolf customers complain about him before; apparently he's slept with most of the she-wolves in the city leaving the clap and gonorrhoea in his wake." Robyn stirred playing with the magnifying goggles on her head, taking delight in the ever growing anger on the frustrated wolf's face.

"That fleabag has STDs!?" The Angry Wolf exclaimed.

"Yeah, he's a real piece a shit." Robyn feigned disgust "You should tell your daughter to get tested."

The Angry Wolf didn't say another word, he just turned around and walked out of the garage while letting a yell of frustration. After twenty or so seconds, Robyn and Oggie were satisfied the rageful dad was gone and opened the trunk that Kodi was hiding in. "STDs, really?" Kodi asked with a annoyed tone that matched his expression.

"I think the words you're looking for are 'Thank you both for saving my worthless ass'." Robyn smirked.

"And knowing you, you're probably riddled with the clap." Oggie sniped, watching the shirtless wolf clamber out of the trunk.

"I am not…anyway, thanks for having my back." Kodi thanked, going over to his locker and pulling out a spare vest.

"So who was this girl?" Robyn smiled slyly.

"Some barmaid I got talking to last night, Rebecca? Or was it Rachel? Wait was it Rina?" Kodi racked his brain.

"You know I would lecture and caution you about you player lifestyle, but I've been doing that for years and that hasn't worked, so go forth and bone to your heart's content." Robyn joked, hoping deep down that one day Kodi would find a girl who would change his outlook on romance.

000

Every member of Team Ceartais had a job outside of their roles as superheroes, Robyn and Kodi were mechanics, Hannah was a talk radio host, Kion worked as a handyman at the properties his partner Jasiri owned, Olivia was an engineer and CEO of Dawson tech. and Luna was a surgeon. These jobs helped keep up the pantomime that all these mammals were regular working folk and had no possible time to be crimefighters. But there was one team member who could not adjust to a normal working life; Alice Wilde was never normal in the first place, the former assassin and enemy of Team Ceartais had only known a life of combat and even though she was highly intelligent and could speak a dozen languages she had no formal education or qualifications to speak of so applying for jobs was problematic. Alice also lacked most social skills that mammals master growing up, having spent most of her formative years in service of a Yakuza clan the bunny find it hard to connect with strangers. There were exceptions to this rule of course; her best friend Jasiri always made her feel at ease and even though it had taken a few years she felt that every member of Team Ceartais was a true friend, even her former arch enemy Robyn.

To the outside world Alice appeared as the awkward and quiet wife of the well known surgeon and rich socialite Dr. Luna Wilde, who ran an anime and videogame reaction channel on youtube as her 'Job'. But in reality she thrust herself into the work of Team Ceartais, when Luna went for a shift at the hospital Alice would head down to the bunker and maintain and repair any weapons or equipment as quartermaster, prepare new training regimes and chase down leads online with the help of the team's AI Bella. However since the 'Purple sky' incident six months ago her daytime workload had increased exponentially since now Team Ceartais was working with the Major Crimes Bureau to help track down and detain criminals who were displaying 'Powers'. Since the emergence of these superpowered criminals, Team Ceartais and the MCB had captured 22 of them but more and more were appearing each and every day, and on this December morning Alice was working with a friend to catch number 23.

"Stop!" Yurei bellowed as she chased down a Pronghorn through the docklands of Tundratown.

"Get away from me, freak!" The Pronghorn shouted back, leaping over some frost covered pallets, genuinely fearing the white rabbit.

"You're only making me angrier!" Yurei warned, bounding over the pallets with a well timed jump.

The Pronghorn ran into the rows of shipping containers, hoping to lose the creepy heroine in the narrow and maze like space but try as he might he couldn't shake Yurei. He had enough and decided to use his power, he turned around quickly took a deep breath before a 13 foot plume of fire erupted from his mouth towards Yurei. The heroine reacted by swiftly raising her cybernetic arm and firing the built in grapple launcher, it hooked onto a nearby crane and she shot up into the sky while also throwing a shuriken into the Pronghorn's shoulder. The fire breather halted his flames and replaced with a scream of pain before scurrying away, Yurei smirked and spoke into her comm "The idiot's heading right for you."

The Pronghorn kept on looking behind to see if Yurei was still chasing after him, he was frightened and distracted that he didn't notice that he had ran out into a clearing where a half dozen MCB agents were waiting for him with tranq guns levelled at his chest, in the split second he noticed their presence a single tranq dart hit him in the centre of his chest. The Pronghorn collapsed to the ground in an unconscious heap while a silver furred fox stood over him with a disgusted look on his muzzle "Sweet dreams, you bastard." Aleks Rojek growled.

"You were right," Yurei opened, appearing from the container corridor "he was stupid enough to be corralled into an ambush."

"Thanks for the assist, Yurei. I appreciate it." Aleks thanked, shaking paws with the ghostly bunny, while the other MCB agents kept a wary distance of the 'Dead' heroine.

"What did this mortal do?" Yurei asked, keeping up the pretence of being a spirit.

"His name's Alister Grazer, his ex-wife divorced him last year on the grounds of domestic abuse and the judge slapped a restraining order on him for good measure. Anyway couple of days ago he shows up at his ex-wife's house and tries to take the kids, the cops are called and when they try to arrest him he suddenly breathes fire at them, one of the cops was burned pretty bad, then he breathed fire at this ex's house, nearly killed her and the kids." Aleks answered with distain, watching as his fellow MCB agents dragged the wife beater away.

" _Connard."_ Yurei cursed in her mother tongue "I should've toyed with him a little more."

"Don't worry, he's going away for a long time." Aleks assured. The silver fox was the head of the MCB's 'Powers Taskforce', an initiative that monitored powered individuals and detained those who used their powers to commit crimes, he had been selected due to being the direct liaison between the Bureau and Team Ceartais and also he had more experience with powered mammals than anyone else. "Come on, I'll give you a lift back to the bunker."

A few minutes later Aleks was standing outside an MCB truck waiting for Yurei to get changed back into her civilian clothes while texting his wife, Zoe, about what she wanted for dinner tonight. Aleks had married to US army corporal four years ago and the pair already had a set of rambunctious twins named Felix and Rhiannon. Despite the heavy work demands of each parent the twins were always at the heart of everything Aleks and Zoe did and they were never without love. "So are you and Zoe still free for that double date on Friday?" Alice enquired from inside the truck.

"Yeah, the babysitter's arranged and we're not working the day after so we can have a drink." Aleks replied "Anyway back to business, I need Team Ceartais to look into a possible powered mammal."

"I thought observation was the MCB's job?" Alice asked back, taking out her 'blackout' contact lenses.

"Usually yes, but this case is delicate." Aleks answered, sounding a little uncomfortable.

"Delicate? In what way?" Alice probed, removing her combat cybernetic arm and replacing it with her everyday robotic prosthetic,

"We think there's a powered child at a children's home." Aleks expanded "Rumours have come to me that there was a 'Incident' at this orphanage last week, now the guys who run the place say the rumours are false but we want to make sure. We're not going to do anything to the kid, we just like to keep tabs on mammals with powers."

"And you don't want to frighten a bunch of kids by sending government agents into investigate them." Alice assumed, opening the van door and hopping out, the lapin was dressed a dark purple sweater, a dorky kitted hat with a dragonball on it and some black jeans.

"Correct, it'd be cruel to put those children through that." Aleks confirmed, looking down at his former enemy.

"So what do you propose?" Alice asked, her golden eyes adjusting to the mid-morning sun.

"That two married teammates go in and ask about adopting a child, get a tour and have a quick look round to make sure everything's fine." Aleks explained.

"That sounds crueller, getting the children's hopes up like that." Alice criticised, putting her paws on her hips

"It's the lesser of two evils." Aleks replied pragmatically "I can organise a meeting for this afternoon."

"So what? You expect me and Luna to go along with this?" Alice asked, not happy with the ethics of the plan.

"Actually, Luna's too high profile, I was thinking maybe Robyn and Hannah could take care of this." Aleks suggested with an awkward smile.

Alice sighed and shook her head "Robyn's going to hate this."

000

It was just before 5pm when Robyn stopped her car in front of the Brother Bear Children's Home, she turned off the engine and groaned "This is so wrong." Before banging her head on the steering wheel.

Hannah, who was in the passenger seat, reach out and stroked the fur atop Robyn's head and soothed "But we're doing it for the right reason, this kid may have powers but they still need protecting."

"But all those kids are going to look at us and think 'Wow, are those our new Moms?' and we're going to lie to them and spy on them…We're going to hell for this." Robyn lamented.

"I know this is hard, I feel bad too, but it's our job to look out for mammals like us." Hannah persuaded.

Robyn let out a frustrated grunt before submitting with "Screw it, let go in there."

The couple exited their car and Robyn walked around and offered her arm to Hannah who had just unfolded her cane, as they linked arms Hannah could feel her love tense up upon hearing the happy sounds of children over the wall "It'll be ok, it's just going to be for half an hour and then we can leave."

"Right, right." Robyn muttered, walking with Hannah to the main entrance of the children's home "So we're looking for a koala kid, right?"

"According to Aleks' intel, yeah. Details are sketchy though." Hannah replied, feeling nervous herself.

Robyn opened the door to the red brick building to find a Kodiak bear in his early thirties sat at the front desk typing away at a computer, he looked up at the sound of the door opening and instantly smiled "You must be the Wilde-Savages." Getting up from his seat and walking over.

"That's us, thank you for letting us drop by." Hannah responded, extending her paw.

The bear crouched down shook Hannah's paw and happily replied "Well it's not everyday a couple's application gets fast tracked by social services, you must've really impressed during the interview stage."

"I-I hope we don't disappoint." Robyn reacted, figuring that Aleks' MCB connections made the successful application appear out of thin air.

"Well let's get introductions out of the way, I'm Kenai and who's who out of you two?" Kenai queried.

"I'm Hannah and this is Robyn." Hannah introduced in a chipper manner, keeping up the act.

"So let me tell you a little about what's going to happen today, at the moment the kids have got back from school and they're playing outside, you'll go out there and just chat to any of the kids, of course there are going to be other social workers out there to observe but you can talk and play with any child that's comfortable talking to you." Kenai elaborated.

"So does this happen often, like potential parents visiting?" Robyn asked, trying to elevate her guilt.

"We get about two visits a week and in most cases these meetings lead to adoption." Kenai answered before taking note of Robyn's nervous demeanour and saying "It's ok to be jittery."

"…Sorry, just this is a little overwhelming." Robyn danced around the truth.

Hannah kissed her wife on the cheek and cooed "It'll be fine."

"So are you ready to meet the kids?" Kenai asked, used to nervous mammals in this situation.

"Y-yeah." Robyn answered before being led through the clean and modern building and out into the back yard, where thirty or so kids of varying species were playing on a large jungle gym complete with slide and ball pit.

Robyn's ears went droopy when some of the kids looked at them with curiosity, the sense of guilt was welling up in her chest. There were three other social workers playing with the kids and they gave a small wave to Kenai who said "As you can tell, these kids have boundless energy even after a full day at school."

"They all seem to get along." Robyn made small talk while looking among the kids for a koala.

Hannah's sense were getting overloaded with all sounds and scents around the playground but her ears focused on the slow creaking of a swing chain, she used her pulse ability to detect the shape of a small mammal alone on a swing set with no other kids within fifteen feet of him. "Um, excuse me but do my ears hear a swing set?" Hannah alerted Robyn, nudging her wife.

Robyn turned to see a small koala boy, no older than five, sitting alone on a swing looking at a toy triceratops with a sad look on his face. Robyn's heart ached, realising she would have to deceive an already sad child but she soldiered on and said "Aww, poor little guy, why's he on his own?"

"Oh, little Aaron?" Kenai reacted, a bit flustered "I hate to admit it but some of the other kids pick on him sometimes, we try to help him but he just likes to sit by himself when it happens."

"Would it be ok if we talk to him? It seems like he needs cheering up." Hannah asked, facing towards the downtrodden boy.

"Um, sure, if he's comfortable with you guys." Kenai answered, wondering how the blind hybrid knew where to look.

Kenai brought Hannah and Robyn over to the swings, the little Koala hadn't even noticed the three adults approach, he only looked up when Kenai gently greeted "Hey Aaron, how you doing buddy?"

Aaron looked up and fibbed "I'm ok." Before tilting his head and looking at Robyn and Hannah with puzzlement and asking cautiously "Who are those ladies?"

"Well this is Hannah and Robyn, they were just wondering if it's ok to have a friendly chat? I bet if you ask nicely, they'll even push you on the swing." Kenai gave a reassuring smile to the timid five year old.

Hannah stepped forward first and extended her paw "It's nice to meet you Aaron, I'm Hannah."

Aaron looked at her paw for a moment before shaking it, suddenly Aaron's expression changed, gone was the shrinking violet being replaced with his chocolate brown eyes lighting up and an excited smile appearing on his face "Nice to meet you, Hannah!" He beamed.

"Well now ain't that something, I've never seen him so friendly with strangers." Kenai breathed, stunned by the boy's sudden change in personality.

"Hannah has that effect on mammals." Robyn chipped in, trying to push her guilt to the back of her mind.

"So Aaron, is it ok if these nice ladies talk and play with you for a little bit?" Kenai asked once more, wanting to make sure the child was comfortable.

"Uh-huh." Aaron sounded, nodding his head.

"All right then," Kenai smiled broadly "I'll just be over here if you guys need anything." The tall Kodiak bear then walked across the yard to another social worker.

Robyn steeled her nerves to talk to the adorable little koala, being from bunny family gave her an advantage when talking to kids, she even had a few ice breakers that she picked up over the years. She eyed the toy triceratops in Aaron's hands and asked in a friendly way "So what's your dinosaur's name?"

"It's Trix and she knows a secret." Aaron replied with a slightly mischievous voice.

"Oh? And what's that?" Robyn asked back, charmed by the boy's playful nature.

Aaron looked around to make sure no one else was in earshot before leaning in towards Hannah and Robyn and revealing with a whisper "That you two are The Undying Scarlet and Bullet."

Hannah tensed up and Robyn's eyes went wide as they let the words echo in their ears and their brains tried to figure out how this little orphan knew their secret. Hannah quickly tried to derail the boy's theory "Oh such an imagination, yes I guess I do have some resemblance to Bullet but it'd be a bit hard for me to fight bad guys while I'm blind."

"That's where your pulse power comes in, you can sense stuff around you. It's ok, I won't tell." Aaron grinned excitedly.

Normally Robyn would freak out and turn the air blue with swears but she restrained herself due to being around a child "How in the world do you know that?"

"Cos' I've got super powers too and when I grow up I want to be a superhero, just like you two." Aaron answered giddily, thrilled to be in the presence of real superheroes.

Even though the boy was excited Hannah could tell the boy was being honest when he said he wouldn't tell anyone "You can read minds, can't you?" she guessed.

"Sorta', I have to touch someone to see their memories." Aaron shrugged "That's why I knew you two were super nice when I shook your hand."

"Clever little guy." Robyn gave an impressed smiled "So I'm going to guess you know why we're here?"

"You want to lookout for mammals with super powers like me and protecting us from mean bullies." Aaron answered, summing up what he had read from Hannah's mind, these words made the married couple's guilt ease significantly.

"That's right. We superheroes have got to look out for one another, even if you're not old enough to fight crime yet." Hannah spoke as she down on the swing next to Aaron, she wanted to make the koala feel safe.

"Is it ok if we ask how you got these powers?" Robyn bridged.

Aaron nodded before answering "It was recess at school when that big purple storm happened, my teacher was shouting for us to get inside when I got knocked down by a weird foggy thing."

"That must've been scary, you must be really brave." Hannah praised.

"I wasn't scared," Aaron blustered, puffing his chest up "when I started seeing mammal's memories I knew I was a superhero like in cartoons."

"Mind reading is a really cool power." Robyn complimented the little koala "So when do you figure out you could do it?"

"I moved things first before I could see memories." Aaron corrected.

"Move things?" Hannah questioned.

Aaron quickly looked to see if anyone was looking his way before letting go of his toy triceratops and letting it float a few inches above his open palm "See?" He grinned.

"Whoa, telekinesis." Robyn gawped.

"…At least you two think it's cool." Aaron said, his tone mellowing.

"What happened?" Robyn asked in a caring tone, hating to see such a cute face sad.

"It's stupid." Aaron tried to brush off.

Hannah put a gentle paw on Aaron's pow and gently stroked one of his very fluffy ears and urged "You know I used to get picked on when I was little too, it feels good to talk about it with someone, even strangers like us."

Aaron treasured the endearing touch of the heroine, it felt new and made his heart feel warm, he already knew he could trust Hannah and Robyn but this cemented the fact. "Last week we were playing soccer out here," Aaron began "Lauren kicked the ball over the fence by accident and everyone started shouting at her, I tried to be a superhero and used my powers to lift the ball back over the fence, I thought they would like it but they called me nasty names." Aaron's brown eyes then became watery.

"Hey, hey, it's ok. You did a really nice thing, I think you're a hero." Robyn encouraged, before offering her paw and saying "And if you don't believe me, read my mind."

Aaron put is small paw onto Robyn's and he said "You think I'm a hero…and that I'm cute." Before taking his paw back.

Robyn let out a chuckle and confirmed "Yeah, I do."

"Listen Aaron, sometimes mammals say mean things because they're scared, you've got to show them that there is nothing to be afraid of, you're a sweet little guy and once you start playing with them again they'll forget all about what happened with the soccer ball." Hannah advised and even though she couldn't see she knew Aaron was smiling at her.

"You're both really nice." Aaron replied honestly "I can show you one more thing that I can do, but I've only done it by accident when Kenai was reading us a bedtime story."

"What is it?" Hannah queried.

"Give me your paws." Aaron asked Hannah. The striped hybrid obeyed and held out both her paws, Aaron took hold of them before taking a deep breath. In a heartbeat Hannah's senses went into overload; in her mind she saw herself in a pale blue shirt and dark jeans sitting on the swing that when she realised and babbled "I-I can see, I can see through your eyes."

"Cool, huh?" Aaron chimed, happy to a joyous look on Hannah's face.

"Wait, you can see!?" Robyn gasped, noticing her wife was trembling with shock.

"I can see whatever Aaron's looking at, I can see me…whoa I've aged." Hannah spoke, close to tears of joy "Aaron, can you turn and look at Robyn please?"

"Sure." Aaron replied, before looking at the dumbfounded Robyn.

"Oh my gosh…Princess. You look more beautiful than I could ever imagine." Hannah gushed, overcome with blissful emotions.

"You can really see me?" Robyn spoke, unable to comprehend how Hannah must be feeling.

"Wait, Aaron, I want to look at you!" Hannah said suddenly.

"Um, I can't look at myself." Aaron replied.

"Hang on." Robyn cut in, rummaging her jacket pocket and selecting selfie mode on her phone then holding it in front of Aaron, the image of adorable little boy appearing on screen.

"Aaron…you're so cute and handsome." Hannah spoke, determined not cry and attract the attention of the social workers.

"Thanks…" Aaron replied shyly "But it only works when I hold hands with someone, I'm sorry."

Hannah let go of Aaron's paws and her world was dark again but it didn't matter, this treasure of a child had given her one of the greatest moments of her life "Don't you apologise, that was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, thank you, you're my little hero."

Over the next thirty minutes Hannah and Robyn played with Aaron; pushing him on the swing, giving him piggyback rides and playing hide and seek. Soon enough Kenai came over and said the children had to go inside for dinner but just as they were about to leave Robyn had the sudden urge to ask "Um, would it be ok if we could give Aaron a hug?"

Kenai smiled at the young couple then looked at Aaron and asked "Is it ok if these ladies give you a goodbye hug, buddy?"

"Yeah!" Aaron answered brightly, throwing his arms open for a hug.

Robyn and Hannah both crouched down and hugged the five year old with heart. "See you around, Aaron." Robyn spoke, not wanting to say goodbye.

"You're my little hero." Hannah whispered into his ear, before letting him go.

Robyn and Hannah walked back to their car in silence, got in and were silent for a moment before Robyn let out "What the hell was that!?"

"I don't know, I don't know." Hannah expressed, hugging onto her tail.

"We go in there for a recon mission and then boom! Feels explosion." Robyn confessed, slamming her head on the steering wheel for the second time in an hour "My heart hurts, my actual heart hurts."

"He's just too damn sweet." Hannah concurred.

"And cute. I mean I don't get it, my guilt is gone and now it's replaced with whatever this is." Robyn tried to convey.

"When you hugged him did you not want to let go?" Hannah asked, revealing how she felt.

"Yes...Babe, I think…No, no, no. It's just my emotions talking." Robyn tried to shake off the affection she was feeling for the child.

"I think I know what you're thinking." Hannah smiled nervously.

"Y-you do?" Robyn reacted, pulling at her ears.

Hannah grabbed Robyn's paw and willed "We'll say it together…3,2,1…"

"I WANT TO ADOPT HIM!" The two hybrids said in stressed unison.

They let the words sink in for a few seconds before Robyn said "I know we're young, but we've been married for five years…Ok I've been thinking about us being Moms for a while."

"Really? Oh, princess." Hannah sang, hugging her lover and peppering her face with kisses.

"Look we're both hybrids which means we're sterile, we can never go down the sperm donor route and after today maybe it's fate or whatever." Robyn reasoned before berating herself with "And I can't believe I feel this way for a kid I met less than an hour ago."

"Maybe it is fate. Any other mammals would be scared of his abilities but we know what it's like to have powers, we can help him, we could be Aaron's Moms." Hannah said happily "And even though Aleks used his connections to fast track an adoption application for spying it doesn't mean we can't use it for good."

Robyn fixed her fur and stated "We're going to do this."

"We are?" Hannah asked with hope.

"Yeah," Robyn replied before opening the car door and getting out "I'm going to ask Kenai is we can visit again this week."

000

The next day came and while Robyn and Hannah were oddly quiet about their recon mission at the orphanage Kion Priderock was focused on something else. He was set to meet with Spitfire in the rainforest district in less than half an hour, apparently she had found something big and she wanted another Ceartais member with her when she clued the authorities in. But first he had a more important task to take care of; dropping his son off at school.

Mufasa Priderock was a hybrid and even though he was half lion, the five year old absolutely had his hyena mother's confidence and wit. Mufasa had the height of a lion cub and also the face but his fur, mane, paws, tail and fangs were all traits from his hyena heritage. The family of three lived in the apartment building Jasiri owned and it was only a five minute walk from the local elementary school where Mufasa attended. Kion had always walked his son to school since his first day and it warmed the lion's heart to see how much his energetic son would be excited for a new school day. "Field trip! Field trip! Field trip!" Mufasa chanted, hopping with joy down the street "I can't wait to see the aquarium!"

"Just don't jump in the shark tank." Kion joked with his fearless son.

"A shark's no match for me." Mufasa said with a hyena like laugh, before holding up his arms and flexing muscles no five year old should have.

The muscles were an unintentional gift from Kion, due to his elixir pump that made body transforming drugs course through his bloodstream, some of the strength enhancing abilities had been passed onto Mufasa. This only came to light when Mufasa was one and lifted up a sofa to retrieve his favourite toy "What's the rule about your powers?" Kion reminded in a very parental manner.

"Only at home or in an emergency." Mufasa groaned before adding "But I bet I could beat a shark."

"I'm sure you could, cub." Kion smiled, ruffling Mufasa's hyena-esque mane. Soon enough they had arrived at the school, Kion gave his son a hug and watched his son skip to class.

Now that important job was taken care of, it was time to meet up with Spitfire. The lion took the sky tram to the rainforest district and walked through the wet and vine covered streets to a disused gym, which looked like it hadn't been opened in over a decade. Kion knocked on the back door, as per Spitfire's instructions, a few seconds later the hulking mech opened the door for her friend. "Sup', big fella." Spitfire greeted, stepping aside so the feline could enter.

"Hey." He responded, walking in out of the rain quickly and shaking some of the rainwater off his mane "I was a little surprised by your text this morning, it's not like you to keep things hush hush."

Spitfire closed the door and led Kion through the damp smelling gym "Well after you see what Judy's uncovered, you'll know why."

"What's Judy got to do with this?" Kion wondered, looking around at the dust covered gym equipment.

"One of her cops found it, she's swore her to secrecy before calling me, the MCB and Camelot." Spitfire hastily explained "They're all waiting in the next room." The mech guided Kion to what looked like a reception area where Chief Judy Wilde, MCB regional director Skye Savage and Camelot operative Ray Kamino were waiting.

"Kion." Ray smiled, going over and shaking the paw of his brother in law.

"Ray? Last I heard you were in Ukraine." Kion replied, shocked to see the white tiger.

"I got called back because of this." Ray shrugged.

"What exactly is 'This'?" Skye questioned, she was in the dark as much as Kion.

"It'd be better if I just show you." Judy grimaced, taking some keys out of her pocket and going over to a padlocked double door labelled 'Workout studio'. Judy unlocked the padlock and Spitfire used her strength to open the heavy studio doors.

There was collective gasp between Skye, Ray and Kion. In the centre of the darkened room was a ball of purple and black mist that was fifteen feet tall and easily the same across. "Oh my god." Skye mumbled.

"Now I see why the head honchos wanted me on this." Ray commented, wary of the strange phenomenon.

"It's so much bigger than the one that hit Robyn." Kion commented before hastily asking "No one's touched it have they?"

"No, when one of my cops called it in I came straight over and padlocked the door yesterday before calling Olivia." Judy explained "It gave my officer the fright of her life."

Olivia had opened up the chest cavity of the Spitfire mech so she could talk to everyone without using the machines synthesised voice, Kion offered his paw to his teammate and she hopped out of the cockpit onto the lion's paw. "So how did your cop find this? it's not like it's got a flashing sign saying 'Scary purple cloud' on the front of the building."Olivia asked, running up Kion's arm and perching on his shoulder.

"Yesterday there was a pretty heavy rainstorm outside and one of my cops was on foot patrol, anyway she saw 'something' moving at high speed through the canopy." Judy began.

"What kind of something?" Skye asked, knowing the answer would likely be cryptic.

"The only description was that it was like a machine and it flew but it was carrying someone that was screaming." Judy continued.

"I don't like where this is going." Kion commented, spotting a smashed skylight above the purple cloud.

"My officer saw the 'Thing' dive through the skylight, then suddenly the screaming stopped, she came into the gym to investigate when she found this." Judy answered, motioning towards the cloud.

"So what you're saying is that the metal 'something' took a screaming mammal into that cloud, like it's some sort of portal or something?" Ray theorised.

"I know it sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie but I found some evidence that might support this fact." Judy revealed, taking out a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolding it "there was some blood and hair on the broken glass of the skylight, I got Basil to run some tests on it and he came up with this."

Judy handed the piece of paper over to sky, on the paper were the results of a DNA test which indicated the blood and the hair belonged to a Horse mare named Regina Lowell "Holy crap," Skye gasped "she's one of the missing mammals."

"Wait, what?" Olivia asked, wanting an explanation.

"Regina Holly Lowell, 18, a rich kid from the Meadowlands who went missing five weeks ago after showing signs of 'Powers' in public. She's one of the seventeen mammals that have vanished since the purple sky incident." Judy clarified.

"So all those mammals were dragged into that?" Kion asked, sounding horrified.

"It's possible, but we can't be sure." Judy answered "Either way I called it into the MCB and the NSA, so it's best if you guys explain your orders."

"Right, my director called me last night and said that this links to the missing 17 case, I've been ordered to secure the building with agents and make sure no civilians get in, Camelot will also been on guard in case any foreign sources try to infiltrate this operation." Skye relayed "I've also been asked to formally ask Team Ceartais for a protection team seeing as we don't know what threat we're dealing with but we know it's linked to 'Powers'."

"You got it." Olivia concurred "But how are we going to figure out what this thing actually is?"

"Well my bosses were hoping you could help with that Olivia, seeing as you're one of the brightest minds in the world." Ray answered.

"Doesn't the government have their own scientists? I'm surprised they're not crawling all over this already." Olivia reacted in a snarky manner.

"That's exactly why we need you, my bosses can't rule out that some aspect of the US government is responsible for this, if evidence comes to light that America or its allies were involved in the creation of this phenomenon we need to bring them to justice before it can be covered up." Ray explained.

"Which is the real reason Camelot is here." Kion figured to which the white tiger nodded.

"Look I can help protection wise but in terms of science, not a chance. I'm an engineer not a physicist…hang on, I know someone who could help, she's an award winning physicist, she has a lab at Zootopia Metropolitan University." Olivia remembered.

"If you can convince this scientist to get on board, I can get her security clearance." Skye replied.

Judy look once again at the purple cloud and sighed "One of my cops, Knight, went missing not long after the purple sky incident. He's a good cop, I picked him for my team myself. If this leads to finding Knight then we need to get started ASAP."

000

There was rough neighbourhoods in every corner of Zootopia but there was none more rough than Bridge street, the three mile long stretch of the canal district that was away from the well policed suburbs and industrial areas. Bridge street had a reputation for dive bars, crumbling tenements and pickpockets. Mammals who lived around her kept to themselves and never pried into anyone else's business at the risk of getting dragged into something nefarious, making Bridge street a great place to hide. It was getting close to sunset and a hooded figure made his way down the street carrying a few bags of canned food and bottled water, making sure not to make eye contact with anyone he passed. The hooded mammal scurried into a back alley and went to the service door of an abandoned furniture store, he knocked it in a coded fashion before an overlay anxious pig opened it. "Quick get inside." The Pig insisted, the hooded mammal obeyed and the pig closed the door behind him before bolting the door. Inside the store were half a dozen mammals of varying species, huddled together around an electric heater and looking at the figure with relief. The mammal pulled down his hood and looked at the mammals with sadness in his eyes "I'm sorry, there's no sign of Regina anywhere." Arthur Knight revealed, the former cop now dressed in dirty rags and his once dark fur was closer to blue.

"That dumb girl shouldn't of ran off, she knew she'd get caught." The Pig, Earl, groused. Unloading the shopping bags and handing out water to the other mammals.

"She was stressed and scared." Arthur justified.

"We're all stressed and scared Arthur, but none of us are dumb enough to head outside, not with those 'Machines' around." Earl countered "We're sitting ducks, the moment we step outside those things will grab us."

"As long as we stick together and don't use our powers we'll be fine," Arthur assured in a sombre voice "we've already lost too many of us."

(AN/ So what did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Luna and Alice have a fun 'Date night', Nick and Judy get some happy news and Robyn gets spooked. Please review and C YA SOON...)


	3. Hope

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox with a Broken Mirror for the late update between getting sunstroke and a having a big job interview, I got the job btw, I've been a little behind. It's been an amazing first week for this fanfic with over 2250 views, 62 reviews, 83 Faves and gaining 96 followers. Thank you all so much for the support for this fledgling threequel and I hope I don't disappoint you folks. On another note may I kindly request that you stop bothering Ziegelzeig, the TAS dev team and myself about the release of the Take a Stand Spin off 'Prey Upon', Zieg is a busy guy and it will be ready when it's ready! So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 2- Hope.**

Ever since Luna and Alice had wed, the two had transitioned comfortably into married life; Alice had becoming an integral part of the Wilde family, even though some of them knew of her dark past, the passion between the two mammals was still burning brightly like the early days of their relationship but most of all, the two had grown accustomed to sharing everything with one another. Luna had become more open about her mental health since they got hitched, with the vixen sharing both the good and bad moments with her wife, who was always there with love and support. There were times when Luna's hallucinations would creep up on her but Alice was the anchor that brought her back to reality. The couple usually went out on dates two or three times a week however, one of these dates were always while they were on patrol in their heroic personas.

Yurei and Andraste had just finished beating the snot out of gang of fifteen prey-supremacists who were attacking a badger owned all-night diner with Yurei dispatching foes on the ground while Andraste was perched up on cell phone tower and taking out the criminals with tranq arrows. Yurei was binding the wrists of a hare with cable ties when the sound of police sirens reached her ears, the ghostly rabbit looked at the relieved badgers and said "The police will take care of it from here, just hand over the security cam footage to them."

"Ok, thank you so much Yurei and thank Andraste for us please." One of the badgers, a waitress, smiled at Yurei, which was rare as most mammals were scared stiff of her.

Yurei noticed the other two badgers with the waitress were a little more apprehensive of her, which was to be expected. She nodded at the family before turning on her heel and walking across the street where Andraste was still on top of the cell tower, Yurei was about to use the grapple launcher imbedded in her cybernetic arm when Luna descended via the wires attached to her belt. The vixen was upside down when she caught the off guard doe with a kiss on the cheek "Sneak attack." Andraste teased, still upside down with her trademark hat gripped in her paw.

"You snuck on a master of ninjutsu, I am ashamed." Yurei hammed up, falsely shying away.

"Then how about you counterattack me?" Andraste flirted, reaching out and pulling down the skull print fabric that hid her beloved's lips.

Yurei obliged and leaned in and kissed the archer deeply, it felt different due to Andraste being suspended upside down, but the passion was still apparent as their tongues danced together. Yurei ended the kiss but was immediately scooped up in Andraste's arms and whizzed up to the top of the cell tower with laughter coming from both heroines. "It's nearly 5am, we should head home." Yurei commented, fixing her mask back over her mouth.

"Actually, I was thinking we could stay out and eat breakfast." Andraste suggested with a sly look in her amber eyes.

"I don't think that diner is going to be serving food for a while." Yurei replied, motioning towards the trashed diner where the badger family were chatting with the cops.

"I've got something else in mind." Andraste grinned.

Five minutes later Andraste had led Yurei to the roof of department store in Savannah central, where a large blanket was laid out with a picnic basket in the middle, soft multicoloured electric lanterns were dotted around the rooftop adding to the sense of romance. Yurei looked up at Andraste and spoke "This is amazing but I know what you're playing at."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Andraste feigned innocence.

Yurei was smiling under her mask at her sneaky lover and walked over to the blanket and sat down while asking "If I didn't know any better I'd say my darling wife was trying to butter me up for information, no?"

"Maybe." Andraste half admitted, joining Yurei on the blanket, opening up the picnic basket and pulling out a thermos of coffee "But since I went to all this trouble you may as well tell me."

"I thought we were leaving it until we had the final test results in writing." Yurei pointed out, looking in the picnic basket and was delighted to see carrot cake style muffins, she immediately took one out and began to gorge on it.

"I'm just excited that's all, I know the doctor would've told you the results today, I know how doctors work remember." Andraste persuaded, pouring out two cups of coffee.

"Really? Do all doctors moonlight as crime fighters?" Yurei poked, with a mouthful of muffin.

"Oh come on, just tell me." Andraste whined, passing Alice a cup.

"You tell me how it went your check up first." Yurei bargained.

"Ugh fine." Andraste huffed "My test results came back all clear, no signs of pancreatic or any other cancer, I have to have another test in six months like always." The heroine was well aware of her biological mother's bloodline to have cancer as the prime cause of death, she had been encouraged by Nick and Judy in her teenage years to get tested regularly for the hereditary disease.

"That's good to hear." Yurei replied while sipping her coffee, it was always a relief to hear her wife's tests were all clear.

"So how did it go with Dr. Gazi? What did she say?" Andraste asked anxiously.

"Well she says I'm in perfect health to have my first litter." Yurei revealed, setting her cup down.

Andraste gave an excited yip then dived at Yurei, tackling her with a hug, Yurei had expected this reaction and chuckled at her overly giddy love. Andraste hugged Yurei tighter and pressed "So what else did she say?"

"She said we can select a sperm donor next week and my eggs can be inseminated a few days later," Yurei explained, stroking the soft ginger fur of Andraste's face and adding "we're going to be parents."

"There's so much to do and so little time, rabbit pregnancy is only thirty days. We'll have to buy clothes, decorate the nursery, choose names." Andraste gushed, already picturing holding the tiny rabbit kits, the vixen was hoping for a large litter.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Dr. Gazi said the first attempt at artificial insemination doesn't always work, let's make sure I'm pregnant first before we buy a crib." Yurei cautioned.

"But we can tell my family right? That we're trying for a litter?" Andraste asked with a small pout.

"Sure, although I'm sure Judy will have a more excited reaction than you." Yurei replied with a smile, feeling at peace in her wife's arms.

000

A tradition had formed over the last few years between the Wilde and Savage families; every Sunday afternoon both families would get together for a traditional Sunday lunch, it gave the close knit mammals a chance to catch up with one another and chill out after a stressful week. And to keep the cooking duties fair, the venue of the lunch would change each week, rotating between Nick and Judy's apartment, Luna and Alice's penthouse, Robyn and Hannah's house and on this Sunday, it was the turn of Jack and Skye. But all through the three course lunch, Robyn and Hannah were feeling a mix of excitement and nervousness due to the news they wanted to share with their loved ones; the young couple wanted to share their news about Aaron. The two hybrids had visited the little Koala twice more since their initial meeting, one at the children's home and another was a supervised visit to the park, Robyn and Hannah already had a place in their hearts for the loveable little boy and treasured every moment with him and if their application for adoption was successful there would be many more treasured moments for years to come.

"I'm stuffed." Nick gave a happy sigh, pushing away his plate which had been home to a roast chicken dinner.

"That's a shame because it's blueberry crumble and custard for dessert." Jack baited, knowing his best friend's affinity for delicious berry.

"Blueberry crumble? Screw it, if I get stomach ache it'll be worth it." Nick grinned, patting his stomach.

"You better not be whining later." Judy warned as Jack got up from his chair and began collecting everyone's empty plates.

"Like the first time you took me to Bunnyburrow and Grandma fed him that stack of blueberry pancakes?" Luna remembered with a smile.

"It was her peace offering for the whole anti-inter thing, what was I supposed to do? Refuse her?" Nick justified, hardly believing that incident happened over two decades ago.

"Refuse Bonnie?" Skye scoffed, with a glass of red wine in her hand "That's a death wish."

"Is Bonnie really that formidable?" Alice asked, tilting her hear slightly "She's always seemed like such a placid doe to me."

Judy, Nick, Skye and Luna all burst out laughing at Alice's words, with Jack's laughter echoing from the kitchen "Bonnie placid? Oh god Frenchie, that's good." Nick laughed, slamming his fist on the dining table.

"I love Grandma but damn she can be the devil herself when she wants to be." Luna chuckled down at her perplexed looking wife.

"Remember the time my mom and Marian first met? I thought they were going to tear each other apart." Judy reminisced.

Skye was laughing along with her old friends when she noticed that the two youngest mammals at the table were oddly silent, she read the expressions on Robyn and Hannah's faces and queried "You two ok?"

"Oh yeah, we're fine Mom." Hannah brushed off.

"Yeah Skye, we're chill." Robyn dodged.

Skye arched an eyebrow and said "Well that seems like the shit side of bullshit."

Judy looked at the two and asked in a disappointed tone "Did you two have a fight?"

"Who's had a fight?" Jack asked, walking back into the dining room holding a tray with eight bowels of blueberry crumble and a jug of custard resting upon it.

"We haven't had a fight." Hannah reiterated.

"Well what's going on then? Usually we can't shut you two up." Nick smirked, smelling a secret as well as the delicious crumble.

"Says the mayor who makes speeches for a living yet can't zip it on his day off." Robyn barbed back.

"Oooh, nice comeback." Nick had to admire as he took the crumble of Jack's tray.

"Seriously though, you guys ok?" Luna asked, sounding concerned.

"Look we're fine, we just have something to tell you all." Hannah caved.

"We're all ears." Judy offered, pouring some custard over her baked treat.

"Didn't Alice and Luna say they had some news?" Hannah responded, trying to swerve the conversation.

"Youngest first," Alice insisted "you have us all curious."

The two hybrids shared a sigh before Robyn reached out and took hold of Hannah's paw for courage, she gathered her grit and began "So you know we had that recon mission at the beginning of the week, at the children's home?"

"Yeah, Rojek told me about it. He wanted you to keep tabs on some powered kid?" Skye answered and asked.

"Aaron, his name is Aaron." Hannah corrected "…Well we kind of went back there."

"Was there a problem with the child?" Jack asked, oblivious to where the conversation was heading but Skye and Judy were already smiling, hoping that their inklings were right.

"Nothing like that," Robyn eased "we just wanted to visit, we wanted to make sure he was doing ok."

"We took the little hero to the park on Friday, even though he's a koala he has the speed of a bunny." Hannah smiled, remembering the young marsupial's laughter when they took him to the Sherwood park's play area.

"Little hero? That's a cute nickname." Nick commented, as oblivious as his best friend Jack while Judy and Skye expectations grew in silent excitement.

"But we were kinda' thinking it could be more of a permanent thing, us taking care of Aaron I mean." Robyn said, gripping Hannah's paw just a little tighter.

"Permanent?" Nick mused after taking a bite of the blueberry crumble.

Before Robyn and Hannah could explain any further Judy burst out with joy "You're adopting!"

"Damn Mom, spoilers." Robyn couldn't help but laugh.

Both Judy and Skye shot out of their chairs and wrapped their arms around their respective daughters with Skye shrilling "I'm going to be a grandmother!"

"Finally!" Judy expressed, hugging tightly onto Robyn.

"Hold up, what?!" Nick exclaimed, suddenly blueberry crumble seemed a lot less important.

"Me and Hannah are going to adopt Aaron, if everything goes well with the application." Robyn stipulated.

"A grandson…" Jack muttered, he had always hoped for a grandchild but never wanted to pressure Hannah into having kids.

Alice got up from her seat and wrapped a hug around her sister in law Robyn and congratulated "I'm so happy for you two."

"I'm going to be an Aunt!" Luna celebrated, rushing over and kissing both Hannah and Robyn on the cheek.

"…So when will this actually happen?" Nick asked, stunned by the news.

"Well with the fast track adoption measures you enacted after the wave we could officially be Aaron's parents in two weeks." Hannah answered, she was referring to legislation that Nick had put through city hall due to the high number of orphans resulting for the natural disaster five years earlier.

"Christmas week, we'll give the little guy the best Christmas ever." Robyn answered with warmth in her heart.

"A grandson for Christmas!" Judy cheered, thumping her foot on the carpet with glee. After a few minutes everyone had calmed down even after they fawned over the photos on Robyn's phone of the koala, when everyone had finished their desert Judy suddenly remembered "Wait, didn't you two have something to tell us as well?" looking at Luna and Alice.

"Well…it can wait." Alice played down.

"No, no, come on, tell us." Nick encouraged while taking a sip of wine, figuring that it couldn't be a bigger bombshell than Robyn and Hannah's news.

Luna and Alice shared a knowingly sly look before the vixen revealed "Me and Alice are trying for a litter."

Nick instantly spat out his wine before coughing "W-what!?"

"I'm going to be pregnant soon, we're selecting a sperm donor next week." Alice smiled, looking forward to becoming a mother.

"More grandchildren!" Judy yipped, jumping for joy before skipping to the other side of the table and tackling both her eldest child and daughter-in-law in a hug "This is the greatest day of my life!" Judy cried tears of joy.

Nick was reeling from the double whammy of news and got to his shaky feet with the help of a grinning Robyn before stumbling over to Luna and Alice and breathing "A litter?"

"Well that's what we're hoping for, the obstetrician says Alice is in perfect health to have a litter." Luna replied giddily, loving the awestruck look on her father's face.

"Why didn't you say something sooner?" Hannah asked with glee.

"We we're waiting until the end of dinner but then you dropped your good news and we didn't want to rain on your parade." Alice answered in an overly polite manner.

Hannah and Robyn walked over to Luna and Alice and embraced them both, "You haven't rained on anything, you've made this day even better." Hannah corrected.

"Yeah, our clan just grew like a Bunnyburrow family." Robyn joked.

"I'm betting there will be five kits in Alice's litter." Judy chimed, binkying with joy.

"What makes you say that?" Skye asked in a happy tone, going over to the liquor cabinet and grabbing a bottle of thirty year old bourbon she was saving for a special occasion like this.

"Back during the whole Drowned crisis me and Nick went to a fortune teller who told us we'd have six grandkids." Judy informed "Aaron will be the first and then Alice will give us five more little miracles."

"No pressure or anything." Nick had to joke at the golden eyed doe.

"Pressure made me what I am." Alice smiled back at her father in law, more grateful than ever that she was part of such a loving family.

An hour or so later as the conversations moved onto the names, living arrangements and now organizing a Christmas with kits in the picture and during this time Robyn nipped to the bathroom. She had just finished up her business and was washing her paws at the sink when she glanced at the mirror only to gasp and stagger back in horror, she saw a tall pale figure where she should be; this strange creature had ginger fur only on top of it's head and it's nose was oddly shaped, it's clothes were similar to Robyn's and so was the eye colour but that's where the similarity ended, this creature looked alien to the spooked hybrid. Robyn blinked her navy eyes and the figure was gone from the mirror, only seeing her true reflection. That had been the seventh time she had seen the odd creature since the 'Purple sky' incident and each time it grew more and more creepy, she had told no one about it, not even Hannah and that's the way she way she wanted to keep it, as far as Robyn was concerned what she saw wasn't real. "It's all in your head." The ginger furred hybrid whispered to herself.

000

Monday morning and it was lashing rain in the rainforest district as normal, it was just after six am and Team Ceartais were gathered at the abandoned gym where the MCB and Camelot had been on guard since Judy alerted her allies to the discovery of the mysterious purple cloud. The Mage was not accustomed to be awake at this ungodly hour, since he usually got up at eight am to open the garage or was in bed sound asleep after a night on patrol "Dudes, why are we even here? We should be in bed." The wolf complained, looking at the anomaly with unease.

"Quit your bitching," Spitfire dismissed "we're dealing with a unknown space time phenomenon and you're complaining cos' you're sleepy, grow up will ya'?"

"We've known about this cloud thing for five days, so why are we all gathered now?" Mage griped.

"Because we've finally got a someone qualified to figure this thing out," Roar reasoned "with her help maybe we can get the missing 17 home safe."

"Fine." Mage tisked, wishing he grabbed a snarlbucks before he came to the dilapidated building.

"Grouchy pup, aren't you?" A voice teased from above. The team looked up to see the Camelot Corporal Zoe Nightfall-Rojek sitting on a support beam, sipping her morning cup of tea while her three armed drones whirled around her.

"Zoe!" Yurei beamed, delighted to see her old friend.

The large bat swooped down with grace and landed on Spitfire's shoulder while commenting "Glad you guys have showed up, guard duty is a total snore, this mission is such a drag."

"But it is our mission." A stern voice came from behind, the group turned to see Kamino coming towards them, the lioness was docked in her one-of-a-kind back and leg brace developed by Dawson tech that helped the paraplegic walk "And I intend for Camelot to complete to the best of their ability."

"Yes Ma'am." Zoe groaned, giving a small salute. The lioness then went up to her little brother Roar and punched him in the arm playfully.

"So who's this expert you got on board?" Scarlet asked Spitfire.

"She's one of the talents I granted a scholarship to, she was a grade skipper like me and Luna, their scholarship paid off because now she's a professor of physics at Zootopia Met." Spitfire explained.

"Wait are you talking about Professor Bloom?" Bullet piped up.

"You know her?" Spitfire asked back, sounding surprised.

"Yeah, when I was at Zootopia met she was the faculty liaison for the LGBTQ society, she always helped us organise events for Pride." Hannah elaborated.

"Sounds like Clara, she does like a party." Spitfire commented.

At that moment the double doors guarded by Camelot operatives opened and in walked Aleks and Ray with a figure between them that made Kodi's breath catch in his throat. The figure was a wolf with sandy blonde fur, a tuft of styled fur rested between her ears, her inquisitive brown eyes were hid behind a pair of black designer glasses. The wolf paid no mind to the superheroes in the room and went straight over the giant purple cloud where she purred "Now isn't this beautiful."

"Professor Clara Bloom," Spitfire opened, the mech stepped over and extended it's bulky mechanical hand to the physicist "it's a real pleasure to have you on this project."

Clara eyed Spitfire with suspicion, shook the mech's hand and replied "Charmed I'm sure, but make no mistake I'm not trusting of government types, the only reasons I'm here is because one; that thing is a mystery and two; Olivia Dawson convinced me."

"Well in that case…" Spitfire gave a low laugh before opening up the chest cavity of the mech causing the startled wolf to step back a little, the chest plate slid up and the cheeky face of Olivia Dawson was revealed "…I'm glad you accepted my invitation."

"Olivia!?" Clara gasped, her brown eyes transfixed on the mouse.

"Surprised?" Olivia questioned, taking off her neural link helmet.

"Just a little." Clara garbled with a flummoxed expression on her muzzle.

"Well since you're already surprised I may as well get this out of the way." Bullet spoke while taking off her domino mask.

"Hannah!?" Clara half laughed, half shrilled "B-But you're blind!? And where's your stripes?"

"There is more than one way to see and I've got fur dye spray covering my stripes." Bullet glossed over before fixing her mask back in place.

"Holy crap." Clara gave an awkward laugh before shaking off her dizzying thoughts and addressing Olivia "So what the hell are you working with these government stooges for? Doesn't seem like you."

Aleks gave an annoyed grunt before responding "These government 'Stooges' are trying to rescue 17 missing mammals, Professor."

"Oh chill out, Foxy. She's a bit of a rebel, like Spitfire." Zoe eased, flying over to her husband and teasingly poking his stomach.

"I assure you, Agent Rojek that I want to see the missing 17 home safe as well but given the circumstances of their disappearances even you have to admit this stinks of government spooks." Clara parried.

Aleks was about to respond with an equally thorny retort when Scarlet cut in "Look, you two can do the he said/she said shit on your own time, can we just get on with the briefing?"

"Fine by me." Clara replied briskly, shooting a pair of evil eyes at Aleks.

The Camelot commanding officer, Ray, cleared his throat and stepped forward and said "From today onwards Professor Bloom will be working here from the hours of 7am until 5pm with Camelot and MCB operatives guarding the anomaly, however Professor Bloom has insisted that a member of Team Ceartais be present as a third party while she conducts her research due to her mistrust of government forces."

"I can't blame her, seeing as Camelot once stole my tech, twice." Olivia backed up Clara's reasoning.

Kiara rolled her eyes and muttered "You're never going to let me live that one down."

"So we'll need at least two Ceartais team members here daily, any volunteers for today?" Ray asked, looking at the heroes.

Mage immediately shot his paw up and said way to quickly "I'll do it." Which caused some dubious looks from the team, Mage wasn't the type to volunteer for anything especially something tedious as guard duty.

"You will?" Roar asked, voicing his confusion.

"Yeah, I mean I may as well get my shift out of the way." Mage back peddled, avoiding the gaze of the attractive professor.

Scarlet then connected the dots and taunted "Sure thing, you perv."

"Dude!" Mage quietly hissed at his friend.

Clara read the situation, rolled her eyes and sighed "That's all I need when I working, some jerk checking me out." Which triggered a round of sniggers around the room and flustered look to appear on the Mage's face. Clara Bloom was beautiful as her namesake but she was not a delicate flower.

000

Arthur Knight had begrudgingly got used to sleeping in the abandoned furniture store, where the smell of damp and the presence of cockroaches had become all too familiar. The ex-cop usually stayed awake at night to watch over the five powered mammals he was protecting, there used to be three others but they had been reckless and used their powers and wound up getting captured by the mysterious machines that were tracking them. Arthur was no longer a cop but he still believed in protecting those in danger and that's what he vowed to do, he had only been asleep a few hours when he felt someone shake his shoulder. Arthur woke with a start but relaxed when he saw Jason, a young caracal boy under his protection, staring back at him "Jason?" Arthur asked in a sleepy haze.

"There's something wrong with Earl!" The twelve year old babbled with a panicky voice.

"What?" Arthur replied, suddenly feeling a lot more awake, he got to his feet and saw the others crowded around the pig who was lying on a shabby sofa, gripping his tummy and moaning in pain.

"Earl!" Arthur panicked, rushing over and kneeling next to the sixty something swine "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing, it'll p-pass." Earl lied, wincing in pain.

"He was complaining of stomach aches last night but it's got worse, it could be appendicitis." Brenda thought aloud, the worried donkey sounded fretful.

"Or i-it could be gas." Earl dismissed.

"That doesn't look like gas." Arthur dashed "Earl we need to get you to a doctor."

"No! No d-doctors! Those machines will find me the moment I set f-foot in the ER!" Earl insisted through his agony.

Arthur knew the pig was right, the others had been captured when they were heading to crowded places or tried to get help from the authorities but the wolf had lost too many mammals to see a good pig suffer like this, he racked his brain for a solution and could only come up with one; he knew Chief Judy Wilde's daughter was a surgeon, maybe he could convince his former chief to bring her daughter to Earl's aid. His paw nervously fiddled with the odd shield shaped pendant around his neck as doubt crept into Arthur's mind, he couldn't rule out that it was the government rounding the powered mammals up and Judy by extension worked for the government, going to her would be a gamble but he didn't have many options available to him "I might now someone who can help." Arthur said in a shaky voice.

(AN/ What did you guys think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Robyn confides in someone about the creature in the mirror, Kodi tries to talk to Clara and Arthur reaches out to Judy. Please review and c ya soon...)


	4. Cracked Reflection

**(** AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror, thank you to everyone who liked, faved, followed, reblogged and reviewed the last update, we've topped 100 reviews with just 2 updates so thank you for sticking with me and the dev team on this fic. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 3- Cracked Reflection**

The Mage was regretting being so vocal about volunteering to guard the purple cloud anomaly, Scarlet had hit the bullseye when she figured out the only reason he had done it for a chance to talk to enchanting wolf Clara and the disapproving gaze the physicist had shot him in response had scuppered the hero's usual confidence. Since the hyper focused professor had started setting up sensors and apparatus to analyse the purple cloud she had not said a word to any of the MCB agents or Camelot operatives guarding the dilapidated gym and certainly not the Mage who was passing the time by messing on his phone or chatting with Kiara, who had taken over guard duty from Zoe.

The Mage was just coming out of the bathroom when he caught sight of Bullet coming through the MCB guarded front entrance to the building holding a paper bag "Hey Bullet." Mage greeted, consciously resisting to call her by her nickname 'Stripes'.

"Hey, I brought us some lunch." Bullet replied, the gunslinger had to be absent from guard duty for a couple of hours due to her radio show.

Mage sniffed the air and detected a warm and delicious scent coming from the bag "Is that falafel?"

"And chicken samosas too." Bullet confirmed before asking quietly "So have you tried talking to Clara yet?"

"Are you kidding?" Mage reacted, swiping away on the furbook app on his phone "After Scarlet called me out as a perv there's no way I'm even risking it."

"Well Scarlet does have a point." Bullet commented with a snicker.

"Thanks." Mage replied with deadpan sarcasm "I thought you two were supposed to be my best friends."

"Oh, we are, but even best friends need to be taught a humility now and then." Bullet pointed out "And Clara isn't the type to fall for your half assed attempts of seduction."

The Mage took the criticism on the chin and redirected the conversation "You know her right, from when you were at college?" the wolf had Clara's furbook page through Hannah's friend list.

Bullet nodded before answering "She was the faculty liaison for the LGBTQ society at the university, she was a councillor for some students coming to terms with who they are and would help us with charity events and help organise stuff for Pride."

"Typical me, I want to flirt with a wolf who isn't even interested in guys." Mage berated himself, finding a furbook photo of Clara at a pride parade caught in mid laugh and garbed in a summer dress that were the colours of the trans pride flag.

"Clara's not a lesbian, she's pan and openly trans." Bullet corrected "She's dated a couple of guys before."

"So, I have a chance?" Mage asked in a cheeky voice.

"Not if you pull the same old garbage you've used on most of the she wolves in Zootopia, she's not the kind of girl to be messed around." Bullet shot down.

"So how about you give me some advice? Come on, help a dude out." Mage tried to persuade.

Bullet considered this for a moment before answering "Well first off you can stop checking out her furbook profile like a creep."

"How did-" Mage began to ask, wondering how the blind mammal knew what he was doing.

"You do the same thing every time you come across a she wolf you're crushing on." Bullet answered flatly "My advice simple; talk to her as an actual person and not as a potential notch on your bedpost."

"Damn Bullet you make me sound like a sleaze." Mage laughed off.

"You ARE a sleaze." Bullet emphasized "And every time you use those corny pickup lines it only reinforces my point."

"Hey, my pick up techniques have a great success rate, I radiate charm." Mage rebuffed, feeling insulted.

"I'm telling you they won't work on Clara, she'll see right through you." Bullet cautioned.

"That sounds like a challenge." Mage reacted.

"No, it's not. This is not a challenge, I'm telling you if you try your usual act on Clara she will verbally annihilate you." Bullet warned, hoping her friend wasn't dumb enough to do something this stupid.

"We'll see." Mage blustered, walking back into the workout studio where the anomaly was located.

"Mage…" Bullet sighed in a defeated tone before following him into the studio. Bullet sensed Clara's shape and scent coming from a workstation she had set up five feet away from the purple cloud "Clara I've brought some lunch if you want some."

Clara spun around in her chair and cheered "You're an angel! I'm absolutely famished." The professor then got up and went over to the small table Bullet had placed the paper bag on.

"Here." Bullet passed Clara a pita wrapped falafel "So have you found out anything cool about the cloud?"

"Tons." Clara answered excitedly before taking a bite of her lunch and continuing with a full mouth "But I'll tell you more tomorrow once I've run some tests. Anyway 'Bullet', I want to know all about this side of you, you kept it under wraps really well at college."

"No one ever suspects the blind girl." Bullet answered, handing The Mage his snack.

"So why'd you tell me?" Clara wondered aloud.

"Well for one I knew Aleks would've made you sign some confidentiality papers, so you couldn't say anything about this project without landing in jail including blabbing mine and Spitfire's true identities. And secondly; you're our best shot at getting the missing 17 home, so I thought it'd be nice for you to know you've got friends that you can talk to about it." Bullet explained.

Clara chuckled at the explanation then said "I tell you if my head wasn't full of theories over the cloud I'd be chewing your ear off about how you can 'see'."

"I promise to tell you everything once we rescue the missing 17." Bullet promised.

Clara then looked over to Mage and back at Bullet before querying "You'll be honest with me, is what Scarlet said true, is this guy a perv?"

"Um, I'm right here." Mage sounded, caught between embarrassment and annoyance.

"He's a perv but he's also a really sweet guy, he's kind of a walking oxymoron." Bullet answered truthfully "Mage is my best friend."

"Really?" Clara mused, eyeing the slightly nervous looking Mage.

"You seem surprised." Mage prodded, trying to regain some confidence.

"A little," Clara admitted, taking another bite of her falafel "from what I've researched about you I was led to think you were a certified ass."

"Oh he's not that bad, it's just his pick up techniques are from the last century." Bullet assured before gobbling up a chicken samosa.

"My technique is flawless." Mage replied on instinct.

"Is it now? Let's see a demonstration." Clara urged.

"Huh?" Mage sounded.

"Perform one of your 'Flawless' pick up lines on me, to see if I'm impressed." Clara proposed.

"But…but that's pointless, you're not interested in a date." Mage tried to shirk off.

"I tell you what if I am swayed, even a little bit, I'll agree to a date with you." Clara bargained, setting her lunch down on the small foldout table.

"For real?" Mage responded.

"Absolutely." Clara promised, picking up a soda can from the lunch bag "Let me paint the picture; it's Saturday night in a busy nightclub, you spot me at the bar alone with a cocktail in my hand, what do you say?"

Mage psyched himself up before playing along with "What's that cocktail you got there?"

"A Moscow mule." Clara responded, taking a fake sip from the unopened can.

"Not one for a Christmas drink? Eggnog or a Winter sidecar will warm you up real nice." Mage asked, figuring referencing the festive season might net him some points.

"I'm a Jewish girl, can you suggest a drink for Hanukkah?" Clara parried.

"Drinks? No. But I've got eight days of presents lined up for you." Mage replied smoothly.

"Do you now?" Clara grinned.

"Sure thing, it's me. And you get to unwrap this gift over and over." Mage said with confidence but instantly triggered a snigger from Bullet.

Clara erupted with laughter and after five or so seconds of cackling she steadied herself and panted "That was awful."

"How was it awful?" Mage asked, embarrassed by the laughter.

"Aww the little player doesn't know how much he sucks." Clara cooed before listing "You didn't ask my name, moved straight from friendly conversation to flirting and implied you wanted to have sex with me in the first twenty seconds of speaking to me. Overall all a two out of ten, it'd be zero but you made a nice recovery when I threw you the Hanukkah curveball."

"Y-you made me nervous." Mage babbled, flustered by how accurate Clara's analysis was.

"So much for your flawless technique but you did give me a laugh, so thank you." Clara spoke as she gave a patronizing pat on the hero's head before picking up her lunch and skipping back to her workstation.

Bullet shook her head and commented "You know she was right, don't you?"

"…Yeah." Mage sighed, he was embarrassed beyond belief, but he couldn't help but admire the quick-witted professor.

000

Robyn had opened up the garage after returning from the run-down gym in the rainforest district, when her employees asked where Kodi was she had answered that the wolf was working on car for private client. The mechanic went about her usual morning routine, fixing engines, bartering with customers and taking a break when Hannah's radio show came on air. It was just after midday and Robyn was in the backyard of the building looking among the accumulated junk and stacked tires for a rodent sized steering wheel she knew she had threw into the pile "Come on, I saw it here last week." Robyn nattered to herself, sifting through the junk. Then in the corner of her eye something flickered, filling her with unease. Robyn quickly spun and faced a huge circular wingmirror that was from an elephant sized truck, the reflection was disturbingly familiar monster that had been haunting her for the last six months. The pale and freckled creature just looked as scared as Robyn but that was the only detail Robyn could process before her fear override her actions and she thrust her fist at the mirror cracking it with ease. Robyn pulled back her bloody paw and was left with a lingering sting as her healing powers closed up the wound, but the hybrid wasn't concerned with the pain, she could still see the pale creature in the cracked reflection side by side with herself.

"Hey Robyn!" Oggie's voice shouted from inside the auto-shop.

"W-what?" Robyn replied, jittery from what she saw.

"Your sister's here." Oggie answered.

Robyn looked back at the cracked mirror too see the monster was no longer there, _it was never there_ she thought before replying "Coming."

Robyn walked back into the garage to be me with the intoxicating smell fried chicken and Luna dressed in one of her designer suits and a bag with the KFC logo on it "Hey Robbie, my last op was cancelled so I thought we could have lunch."

"Fried chicken? You are a legend." Robyn smiled, guiding Luna into her small office while the rest of the mechanics tinkered away at their respective tasks "Not that I'm complaining but you haven't dropped by for lunch in months, is there something up?"

"Nothing's up, it's just we haven't chatted about the whole 'We're both going to be Moms soon' thing and I kinda' wanted to talk about my future nephew." Luna explained, setting the bag down on the desk and pulling out two milkshakes and the bucket of chicken.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about my new nieces and nephews, it's just a freaky coincidence that were becoming Moms at the same time." Robyn said, wasting no time in grabbing a piece of fried chicken and starting to munch on it.

"I know right," Luna smiled "so when are you next seeing Aaron?"

"Tomorrow, the social workers are going to inspect the house and if they're satisfied they'll let Aaron have his first sleepover. Hannah and I are telling him tomorrow that we want to be his Moms." Robyn answered happily.

"Wait he hasn't figured that out yet?" Luna asked, supping on her chocolate milkshake.

"No, he just thinks me and Hannah are his friends because he's got powers like us." Robyn clarified.

"I can't wait to meet him." Luna beamed.

"Hey can I ask you something personal?" Robyn changed the subject.

"Shoot." Luna allowed, grabbing a drumstick and bit a piece off.

"How come Alice is the one who's getting knocked up and not you?" Robyn asked, glad to see Luna didn't seem fazed by the question.

"Well me and Alice want multiple kits so her being pregnant makes more sense plus I don't want to pass anything onto the kits." Luna answered.

"Pass on? Like what?" Robyn asked twice.

"Well there's a long history of pancreatic cancer from the Todd bloodline, plus studies have shown psychosis can be hereditary and we both know I've had mental health problems in the past." Luna explained, sounding ashamed when she knew she shouldn't feel that way.

"Wait psychosis can be passed down through families? For real?" Robyn asked quickly, nearly choking on her food. Maybe what she was seeing in mirrors was linked to this possible psychosis gene in the family.

"Yeah, it can. I don't want my kids to go through what I went through; having hallucinations, fits of rage, becoming someone else…I never want them to experience that." Luna revealed before noticing the trepadacious expression on her little sister's muzzle "Why do you ask?"

Robyn hesitated slightly, she wanted to keep her 'Mirror Monster' a secret but if there was a way to be rid of it she knew she had to take the risk of confiding it to Luna, after all if there was anyone who knew about seeing things that weren't there it was Luna. Robyn broke free from her doubt and answered, "Look don't tell Hannah but I think…I think I'm having a mental health crisis."

"You?" Luna nearly gasped, surprised that her seemingly stable sibling could have a troubled mind.

"…Ever since I got hit by that purple cloud thing all those months ago I see this creepy thing sometimes." Robyn spoke, feeling vulnerable.

Luna composed herself and asked in a professional manner "And what is it you see?"

"A monster, a pale creature with no fur expect on the top of it's head, it dresses like a mammal, but it looks freaky…I see sometimes when I look at reflective stuff." Robyn confessed.

"How often do you see it?" Luna enquired.

"Every couple of days, it just shows up for a few seconds in a mirror then I blink, and it's gone. So how can I fix this?" Robyn asked, sounding desperate.

"Well it does seem like you're having an hallucination, but you've never showed any symptoms of mental illness before, I can organise you a session with my therapist if you want but I don't think that'll help a lot." Luna answered carefully.

"So maybe medication?" Robyn assumed that's what her sister was getting at.

"No, I was thinking that you should talk about this with Hannah." Luna advised.

"What? No! It'll only make her worry." Robyn stressed.

"Robbie she's your wife, you can't keep this sort of stuff from her." Luna enforced "Look take it from someone who deals with mental health problems on a regular basis, talk to your wife. If I didn't talk to Alice about what going on with me I'd get depressed and my hallucinations would get worse, Alice is always there for me when I'm having problems, she doesn't judge me or tell me to toughen up. She's my anchor that brings me back to reality, Hannah can be that for you if you only let her."

"I dunno' Lu," Robyn mumbled anxiously "we're so close to becoming parents, I don't want this to ruin our chances of adopting Aaron."

"Look I won't force you to do anything but if I were you I'd tell Hannah." Luna spoke, leaving the ginger hybrid with a lot to think about.

000

Arthur Knight hated being out in broad daylight, he usually went out early evening when the sun was setting but could go to a store and buy supplies for the other mammals in his care, but he had no choice. Earl's pain had gotten worse, the elderly pig had developed a fever and his speech had become hazy, so Arthur had no other choice but to seek help; he needed to find Judy Wilde and get her daughter to come to Earl's aid. Luckily for Arthur, Judy was a creature of habit, when he was at the ZPD he's always notice Chief Wilde leave the precinct at exactly 12.30pm to grab an oddly flavoured carrot/coffee frappe from the Snarlbucks coffee shop across the street. He had arrived fifteen minutes early and was taking cover behind a dumpster waiting for the seasoned cop to walk by, his thoughts were so preoccupied with Earl that the time flew by and he noticed Judy come into view with the frappe in her paw. "Officer!" Arthur called out, being cautious of calling her chief and revealing his identity right away.

Judy looked down the alley and could see the hooded figure, the cautious chief asked with suspicion "Is anyone there?"

"I need you help." Arthur responded, keeping his face hidden.

Judy took a few steps forward and instructed "Step into the light and I'll see if I can help."

Arthur took a breath and forced himself to step from behind the dumpster and slide his hood off "Nice to see you chief." He said awkwardly.

"Knight!?" Judy gasped, nearly dropping her drink "Oh my god, Knight, thank god you're ok, you've been missing for so long."

The rabbit went to walk over but was stopped when Arthur urged "Please, don't come any closer."

Judy halted and took a good look at the cop who had been missing for months; his clothes were creased and dirty, his fur shaggy and ungroomed and its colour seemed bluer than she remembered, Arthur's entire demeanour was one of fear and desperation "Arthur what's going on? Where have you been?" Judy pressed.

"I…I can't say. Look I know this is weird, but my friend is ill and I need your help." Arthur said, his eyes scanning the area for anything suspicious.

"What do you mean ill? If your friend is sick, then take them to the hospital." Judy spoke as she set he drink down on the ground, her mind swimming with questions.

"No, we can't take him to a hospital, they'll find us, they'll find us and take us away like the others." Arthur replied, clearly agitated.

"Who'll find you?" Judy probed, wondering if he was talking about the missing 17.

"Them! Those machines!" Arthur answered with a stressed whisper "Look forget about that, your daughter Luna is a doctor, right? I need her to come and help Earl before something terrible happens."

"Earl? You mean Earl Wilshire? The pig grandfather who went missing?" Judy asked thrice with hope, memorising the name from the missing 17 case file.

"No more questions, I need your daughter's help." Arthur implored, cursing himself for saying Earl's name aloud.

"Are there others with you? Just tell me where you guys are hiding, and I'll promise I'll keep you guys safe. You can trust me." Judy tried to convince.

Arthur shook his head and babbled "We can't trust cops…some of us went to the cops and got caught."

"Knight, listen to me; I will keep them safe, just tell me where they are." Judy pressured, stepping closer.

Alarm bells were ringing in Arthur's head, Judy was asking about the others way too much, his need to protect the others masked his logic "…You're working with them! You want to round us up!" He growled.

"No, I just want to get them home safe." Judy back peddled, getting ready to chase the spooked canine.

Judy took another step forward and Arthur barked "You won't take us!" with that being said he outstretched his paw and it was instantly surrounded by a faint blue light, the pendant under his shirt and around the wolf's neck shone with the same colour, Judy was caught unawares by the light and failed to notice that some trashcans beside her were now glowing with the same strange blue light, the trashcans crashed in front of her startling the bunny and blocking her path. When she looked back up Arthur had vanished, her heart was weighted with worry as she thought about what drove Arthur and the others to hide, what did they fear? "Knight…" Judy whispered before getting out the cheap burner phone Team Ceartais had given her.

000

As soon as Olivia received the call from Judy she had gotten straight to work in tracking Arthur. The engineer had gotten the team's AI, Bella, to search through security camera footage looking for any wolf that matched the description Judy had given. Bella had managed to trace Arthur's movement to a pedestrian walkway leading into the Canal district but that was the last time he came up on any security cam feeds, Olivia figured that since Arthur was an ex-cop who knew the city pretty good as well as a knowledge of security camera placements.

It was Spitfire and Roar's turn to patrol tonight and the two heroes split up and searched different areas of the Canal district looking for Arthur or anyone else from the missing 17. It was just after 11pm and Spitfire was standing on top of a dingy tenement on Bridge street scanning nearby abandoned building with her thermal vision searching for any groups of mammals hiding out. **"Hey Spitfire, you found anything yet?"** Roar asked over the comm link.

"Nothing yet, I'm on Bridge street at the moment so I'll be a while searching this shit tip." Spitfire replied.

" **Similar story in the industrial areas, all I've had so far is a few scared security guards when they see me."** Roar informed.

"Listen we'll do this for another hour and if we don't find anything you can go back home and curl up in bed with Jasiri." Spitifre offered "Although I'm sure you won't be sleeping."

" **Spitfire!"** Roar reacted, aghast.

"Oh man, it's so easy to wind you up you little prude." Spitfire chuckled, but the sound of screeching tires ended her laughter. She looked down the street to see an old hatchback skidding around the corner, she zoomed in her vision and saw a panicked Arthur behind the wheel with a semi-conscious pig in the back seat. Spitfire was about to give chase but then she saw what Arthur was speeding away from; the air above the car were two automatons with jet propulsion on their backs, the robots were shiny silver with some of their limbs and chest plates painted leaf green, their arms were outstretched and firing what seemed to be sonic blasts from their palms while Arthur with his free hand tried using his gun to shoot back at the two robots. Spitfire had no idea what they were or where they came from, all she knew was that she had to stop them before they got to Arthur and his pig friend. "Roar get your ass to Bridge street now, we've got trouble!" Spitfire ordered, launching herself into the air and flying straight at the strange robots.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Who are these robots? Who do they belong to? What is the monster Robyn keeps seeing? Next time on The Broken Mirror; Spitfire and Roar take on the mystery robots, Clara reveals her findings about the cloud, Kodi has to race to someone's aid and Aaron gets some good news)


	5. Angels and Devils

(AN/ Hey folks, very speedy update because my head is thumping from a sinus infection so without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 4 –Angels and Devils.**

Arthur's panicked eyes were transfixed on the rain soaked road ahead of him, pushing the old hatchback to it's limits as he tried to escape from the pursuing machines. The wolf skidded around the corner and barked to his passenger "Earl, keep your head down, they might smash the glass to grab you!"

Earl, the sickly sixty-something pig looked at Arthur with a pained expression "I'm sorry, I s-shouldn't have powered up, I couldn't help it…"

"It doesn't matter now, we're going to get out of this!" Arthur assured, hoping it wasn't a lie.

"Art…you need to stop the car and run as f-fast as you can." Earl panted, putting his trotters on his pain riddled gut.

"Not happening, I'm not leaving you!" Arthur snapped, his eyes flicking to the rear view to see the two machines were still chasing the car.

"I'm t-the one who used my power, they're tracking me! You can escape, the others still need you!" Earl winced, not wanting to see a mammal so young risk their life for him.

"I'm not losing another mammal!" Arthur forced, his stomach sinking as he saw one of the machines darting for the car.

Then in a flash and with a smash, Spitfire dived out of nowhere tackling the closest bot to the car, the mech clipped the rear bumper of the hatchback causing it to spin out of control and crash into a lamppost.

Outside on the street, Spitfire grabbed the downed bot by the leg with both hands and swung it like a hammer throw into its twin, both of them slamming into the wall of a tenement building. Spitfire glanced over at the crashed car and to her relief saw that Arthur and Earl were still moving, she was about to call over to the former cop when her sensors started alarming about 'Energy weapon charging!' Spitfire didn't have time to turn, she was knocked onto her back by a green blast of light, the entire mech shook, the holo screens in the cockpit flickered and the teeth in Olivia's mouth rattled that much she could taste the blood leaking from her gums "What the hell?" Spitfire reacted, getting to her feet only to be met by a strike to the head of the mech, Spitfire reacted by taking hold of the bot and trying to throw it again but was met with resistance.

"THREAT LEVEL THREE, LETHAL FORCE AUTHOURISED." The bot's deep electronic voice spoke.

"Three's my lucky number!" Spitfire yelled, charging up her electro gauntlets before breaking her hold and launching and a quartet of abdominal punches before upper cutting the enemy machine.

Over at the crashed car the disorientated Arthur stumbled out of the car and made his way to the passenger door to tend to Earl but the stomps of the other bot grabbed Arthur's attention. On reflex Arthur outstretched his paws, they emitted a blue glow and the bot came to halt, struggling to move against the wolf's powers that had him chained "Earl, get out of the car and run!" Arthur hollered.

"I d-don't think I can …" Earl breathed, opening the passenger door and staggering out.

"Just run!" Arthur yelled, his paws trembling, it took a lot of energy to keep the bot rooted in place.

The argument was interrupted by the sight and sound of Spitfire being thrown on top of the crashed car before being blasted again with the green coloured energy blast causing the pilot inside to give a cry of pain. Spitfire retaliated by opening up her shoulder pauldrons and launching a brace of mini missiles, with both of them exploding as they hit the bot that threw her but from the cloud of smoke the enemy bot emerged unscathed. "Bollocks." Spitfire uttered with fear, those missiles were the most powerful weapons in her arsenal and they hadn't made a scratch on the mysterious bot "What the hell are you made out of?"

Spitfire was caught off guard as her opponent shot towards her with great speed, goring her and tackling her to the ground, cracking the road "LIFEFORM DETECTED, AUTHORISED TO ELIMINATE!" The bot sounded before using it's powerful hands to try and tear off the chest plating and gain access to the mech's cockpit.

Olivia knew she was outmatched and realised if that bot exposed the cockpit she was a goner, it was time to escape "Shit, shit, shit!" she hissed before pressing the escape pod button on her control panel. Her seat detached from the rest of the cockpit and ascended upwards towards the head of the mech, the seat then docked into a cylindrical pod about the size of a soda can. The head of the mech opened and the escape pod launched out with speed, although the pod came to a sudden jarring stop, Olivia looked out the small window of the escape pod and saw that she was in the clutches of the bot "No." Olivia whispered, her mouth going dry from fright.

The bot began to put pressure on the escape pod, crushing it and triggering numerous alarms in the small vehicle. The glass of the window began to crack and Olivia felt her blood run cold, she wasn't ready to die but there was no escape, with anger and defiance in her heart she shouted "OO-DE-LALLY!" then closed her eyes and waited for the end to come.

Suddenly the pod was ripped from the bots gripped and bathed in a blue light, Olivia opened her eyes to find her escape pod been held by an exhausted looking Arthur Knight. "I got you!" He panted. But in that split second that Arthur's attention was on Olivia both enemy bots took advantage and swooped at the weakened Earl. The pig let out a terrified shout as he was grabbed by one of the bots, the foes soared into the sky with Arthur screaming "Earl!"

Earl was in agony, he was the most scared he had ever been in his life however he wasn't about to let these robots win. He knew he was probably going to die but if he was about to kick the bucket, he was going to do it as a free mammal and not a prisoner, with his last ounce of strength Earl tapped into his power; the swine's body to shudder as he placed both his trotters on the arms of the bot that was holding him, his hands began to secrete globs of pink fluid that melted away the mechanical arms holding him, within two seconds the corrosive goo had melted through the metal causing the bot to drop Earl.

"No!" Arthur bellowed, his paws reaching out and trying to use his powers to catch Earl but the pig was plummeting too fast, the pig hit the pavement head first; his head splitting open with a spray of blood and the haunting crunching sound of his neck breaking.

"Earl…" Arthur mumbled as his tearful eyes looked upon his dead friend, he was so focused on the fresh corpse he didn't notice the enemy bots flying off into the night, he threw his head back and let out a long and mournful howl.

"Officer Knight." Olivia alerted from inside the damaged escape pod "We need to get you to safety before those things come back."

Arthur placed the pod on the pavement before sniffing "I still have a job to do, I've got to get back to the others."

"Knight, Team Ceartais are on your side, we can help keep you and your friends safe." Olivia implored, grunting in frustration that the door release for the pod was busted during the battle.

"No…No, everytime we seek out help someone either winds up kidnapped or dead…I'm sorry." Arthur replied with grief in his voice, he took one final look at Earl before racing off into a nearby alley.

"…Damn it." Olivia spoke, leaving her with a sense of defeat; she had failed to save the life of the pig, was unsuccessful in getting Arthur to come in from the cold and was easily bested by the deadly automatons.

She was pulled from her thoughts when her comm crackled with Roar's voice " **Spitfire, I'm two minutes from your location, how you holding up?"**

"Not well, Roar." Olivia sighed, gazing at the bloodied sidewalk "Not well at all."

000

For any young family breakfast time was the most hectic part of the day and the Rojek-Nightfall household was no different; Aleks and Zoe took turns between making breakfast for the family and getting the kids ready for day care and this morning, it was Zoe's turn to tackle the hyperactive hybrid twins. "Rhiannon, get down, don't make me fly up there!" Zoe warned one of her three year olds, who was trying to grab a cookie from the jar on top of the fridge.

"But I want a cookie." Rhiannon pouted, the little hybrid looked like her dad when she grumpy.

Aleks, who was at the kitchen counter finishing up the packed lunches for his family when he smiled slyly "You know that Santa Claus still has time to put you on the naughty list, right?"

Rhiannon's pout morphed into panic before babbling "I'm not naughty."

"Then prove it, be a good girl and listen to your mother." Aleks countered, knowing that the 'Santa' threat always worked a treat in the run up to Christmas.

Rhiannon hastily flapped down to the kitchen table before Zoe straightened her daughter's t shirt before asking her husband "Foxy, did the email come through about the kids' passports come through?"

"Yeah, we can pick them up in a few days." Aleks replied, loading up the twins' lunch bags with copious amounts of fruit.

"I can't wait to get on the plane, a snowy Christmas in Poland will be the perfect break from Zootopia." Zoe smiled, finishing her tea.

"The twins are going to be spoiled rotten as soon as we arrive at my parents, prepare for two weeks of sugar rushes." Aleks replied, even though it sounded like he was complaining he was excited about spending his first Christmas in his home country for over five years "It'll be great to get away from all this superhero stuff for a couple of weeks."

"Those superheroes are our friends." Zoe frowned "I swear ever since we've started this new assignment you've been a real grump."

"I'd just rather be helping powered mammals than playing babysitter to that pretentious professor." Aleks complained.

"What's pwe-ten-sus mean?" Rhiannon asked, struggling with the pronunciation.

"Ignore your father, he's just being mean about a friend at work." Zoe brushed off "Wait a sec, it's way too quiet, where's your brother?"

"Getting dressed." Rhiannon grinned cheekily.

"I already dressed him," Zoe muttered before eyeing her daughter with suspicion "what's Felix up to?"

Zoe got her answer when a small colourful figure zoomed into the kitchen and flew circles around the kitchen table while letting out a cute little roar, Felix was dressed in his favourite dress up costume; a dragon. The little hybrid had a habit of putting it on and pretending to be a dragon at the inopportune times "Not again." Zoe sighed before giving chase to the zippy child, this was just another normal morning for the family.

A couple of hours later Zoe and Aleks had already dropped their twins off at day care and had arrived at the abandoned gym in the rainforest district where Olivia was brining everyone up to speed with the tragic events of the night before. "So these robots managed to defeat your mech?" Aleks asked, stunned by this revelation.

"I threw everything I had at those things and it did nothing, their tech was super advanced." Olivia informed, she was stood on Clara's work station "I'm already prepping a new prototype mech for deployment in case we run into those things again."

"If I only had got there quicker, that pig might still be alive." Roar lamented.

"Roar, don't talk like that." Bullet soothed while Scarlet put a reassuring paw on Roar's bulging arm.

"I've checked with my intelligence sources and none of our files match the bots' appearance from your mech's video feed." Zoe informed, looking at the search results on her tablet.

"I'm just thankful Knight was there to save your neck," Andraste said to her best friend "you said he used some sort of levitation thing to save you?"

"His power set is hard to describe but yeah he saved my arse, I just wish I could've convinced him to come with us." Olivia regretted, picturing the wolf howling with grief.

"If these robots really are hunting powered mammals then why didn't they grab Officer Knight?" Yurei brought up, this fact had been niggling at her.

"That's easy," Clara spoke, sipping her coffee "they're picking the ones they've been ordered to get."

"What do you mean?" Aleks asked back, puzzled by the professor.

"I've been reviewing the stats and according to your files there are a total of 118 known powered mammals in Zootopia right now and yet only 17 went missing, why not all of them? It's because someone is selecting these mammals based on their unique powers, whoever programmed those robots doesn't select on gender, age or species but what powers they have, like picking the best of the bunch." Clara hypothesised

"Like picking the best players in a draft." Scarlet reworded, noticing the usually chatty Mage was acting subdued.

"Exactly." Clara confirmed "The only thing that's got me is who would do this."

"Well has your research turned up any clues as to who created the purple cloud?" Olivia asked, motioning to the anomaly.

"Well I did a few experiments and one confirmed a theory of mine." Clara answered holding up a clear plastic bag with a half eaten, mouldy piece of bread in it.

"Ok I'll bite, what's with the gross bread?" Andraste queried.

"I put this bread slice in a small cage that I had tethered to my workstation, I threw it at the anomaly and left it overnight. I pulled it out and it has become mouldy." Clara explained.

"So the cloud makes things mouldy?" Mage asked, saying his first words to Clara after the disastrous conversation the day before.

"No, the bread was sent somewhere else, in essence this cloud is a portal and the bread landed to whatever is on the other side." Clara corrected, her voice full of excitement "We're dealing with a tear in reality, a rift that teleports to a different location, this is the scientific find of the century!"

"But why did the bread gone green, doesn't that usually take nearly a week?" Roar queried.

"Yes, which leads to me to another theory, wherever it is on the other side of the cloud has a different plane of time." Clara answered with enthusiasm "Time passes more quickly on the other side, I'm going to run some tests today to figure out exactly how much time passes there compared to here."

"Alternate dimensions…it sounds like something out of a comic book." Andraste commented.

"Well we are superheroes." Scarlet reacted.

"I hate to be a downer but have you any idea what exactly this is?" Aleks directed everyone's attention to the ominous cloud.

"I have no idea but if I was a betting mammal I'd say this was constructed as an experiment." Clara replied.

"What makes you say that?" Aleks pressed.

"It would take a massive amount of energy to rip open a dimensional tear let alone sustain for so long, there is no energy source on the planet that could pull that off and the fact that it gives off no radiation creeps me out." Clara explained.

"Wait it gives off no radiation!?" Olivia gasped.

"What? Why's that bad?" Mage asked aloud, having no idea what that meant.

"Everything in the known universe gives off a small bit of thermal radiation, this cloud doesn't." Clara clarified "Honestly if I had to guess where this came from it would be from a powered mammal."

"A powered mammal could've created this?" Bullet questioned.

"It's the only reasonable theory I've got at the moment, these powers are strange and vary greatly so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that someone with powers created this." Clara said further.

"So someone with powers is collecting other mammals with powers, weird." Scarlet summed up.

"Thank you for your update Professor, we'll let you get back to your work." Aleks said politely.

As Clara went back to her research Team Ceartais huddled together and discussed the guard schedule for the day, Olivia climbed on Andraste's offered paw and opened with "Ok so I was supposed to be on guard with Yurei today but seeing as one of my mechs was trashed and I still have to run the final tests on the new prototype, I'm not going to be much good today so I need someone to take my place."

"Sorry but I'm on shift with Jasiri in less than an hour." Roar gave an excuse.

"I've got half a dozen kids to operate on today." Andraste answered, not wanting to leave her patients in the lurch.

"Me and Scarlet have to get the house ready for the social services inspection." Bullet fretted.

Olivia sighed and looked to the wolf who was avoiding eye contact with her "Mage, can you help me out?"

"Not really, I've got work." Mage tried to wriggle out of the conversation.

"We've got Oggie and the others minding the garage today, they'll be fine." Scarlet waved off.

"Oh come on, I was on guard duty yesterday." Mage whined, not revealing the real reason he didn't want to stay.

"Please, you'd be doing me a huge favour," Olivia pleaded before nodding in Clara's direction "plus you get to spend more time with that beauty over there."

"I think that might be the problem." Bullet smiled sympathetically.

"Dude!" Mage gave a quiet hiss, looking over his shoulder and thankful that Clara seemed oblivious to the conversation.

"Oh," Yurei sounded with realisation "didn't it go well?"

"Guys please." Mage groaned.

"Mage I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important, those robots are insanely tough and we need at least two team members here to stand guard." Olivia convinced.

"…Fine, but you owe me." Mage conceded.

It was an uncomfortable few hours for Mage, he decided to busy himself by chatting with Aleks and Zoe, sparring with Yurei and messing around on his phone. Mage was doing his best not to look over at Clara, he knew she wasn't interested in him, he was still embarrassed by how much he screwed up their first conversation and yet he couldn't stop thinking about her. Mage knew that it was an unhealthy way to think, he had to respect her feelings, so he kept on trying to keep his mind distracted. It was just after lunch and Mage was sat with Yurei casually chatting about her baby plans, a subject that excited the wolf who had a soft spot for babies "Wait, so you and Andraste are selecting a donor out of a catalogue?" he half laughed.

"That's what the fertility clinic gave us, turns out there are a lot of buck rabbits in Zootopia that donate sperm." Yurei shrugged, sharpening one of her shuriken.

"So have you two chosen which buck will be the donor?" Mage asked, genuinely interested.

"We've narrowed it down to a few, Luna seems to want a donor with a high IQ and I want a donor who's athletic." Yurei answered, the subject had been a hotly contested issue for the couple.

"So jock babies or nerd babies." Mage kidded "Well whichever buck you choose I know you two will be wonderful Moms."

" _Merci_ Mage and I know you'll be a great uncle to my kits." Yurei smiled under her mask.

The happy conversation was interrupted by the vibration of Mage's phone, he looked at the screen to a photo of her sister smiling with the words 'Sasha Calling' overlaid, he pressed the answer icon and pressed the phone to his ear "Hey Sis."

" **Kodi, I need you to come to the art school right now!"** A flustered voice alerted, Mage recognised the voice belonged to Ayesha, a camel who was Sasha's best friend and roommate at the college dorms.

"Ayesha? What's wrong?" Mage asked back quickly, his worried mind jumping to the worst possible conclusions.

" **Sasha got mugged, her phone and camera were taken! She's in the middle of a panic attack**!" Ayesha relayed, Mage could hear the sobs and strained breathing of his little sister in the background.

"Oh god no," Mage spoke, rising to his feet, making Clara look over "listen to me; don't let mammals crowd her, empty the space around her and try to get her to focus her breathing, I'm on my way now!"

"She's having an anxiety attack?" Yurei asked in a worried tone, the doe was familiar with the younger Jones sibling's battle with anxiety.

"I've got to get to her, my parents are out of town till this evening, she'll only calm down around family." Mage panicked, patting his jacket for the keys to his truck only to remember "Crap, I didn't drive here today, I'll have to order a Zuber."

"That'll take too long, I'll drive you." Clara said out of the blue, walking over.

Aleks overheard Clara's plan and protested "But professor your work…"

"…Can wait." Clara finished, grabbing her purse and fishing out her car keys "It's an emergency."

Mage's mind was so fixated on Sasha's wellbeing the social awkwardness between him and Clara simply vanished "Thank you." He said with appreciation as he followed Clara who was already marching out of the workout studio.

Within minutes Clara was driving down the wet roads of the Rainforest district, making her way to the Tundra Town border wall where just through the tunnel The Zootopia School of Art was located. "Ok I've texted my parents, they're on their way back from L.A as we speak." Mage spoke, trying to focus his thoughts.

Clara looked over at the vigilante wolf in the passenger seat and saw the desperation in his eyes, she didn't see any sign of the jerk she had spoken to the day before, with kindness in her voice she assured "It's going to be ok, by the sounds of it you and your family have a plan for these sorts of situations."

"I know, but it's been so long since her last attack, I hope this still works." Mage replied getting out a small and cheap digital camera from one of the pockets in his jacket.

"A camera?" Clara asked, a little confused.

"My sister uses cameras to cope with her anxiety, everything seems less scary to her through a lens. But it only works with her cameras, this is one of her old ones." Mage explained, turning it on and glad to see the battery was full.

"How long has this been going on?" Clara enquired, hoping that conversation would help Mage not dwell on bad thoughts.

"Since she was a kid, she was put in a hospital by some bullies and ever since she's had anxiety issues." Mage answered, before peeling off his domino mask.

"Mage! What the heck are you doing?" Clara nearly shouted, surprised the superhero was unmasking.

"I can't show up on campus in my hero gear, they'll figure out who I am if I rush to my sister dressed like this." Mage justified, taking off his beanie hat, leather jacket and unclipping the holster he kept his weaponised cards in "Besides Stripes said you've signed one of those confidentially contracts, so I know you won't blab."

"Right…" Clara steadied herself, hating to admit that wolf made sense.

"Thank you for doing this, it means a lot." Kodi thanked wholeheartedly, his eyes fixed on his phone while he texted Ayesha for updates.

"You're welcome, Mage." Clara responded, making her way into the tunnel to Tundra Town.

"Kodi." He corrected, reading the latest text and learning that his sister was in common room area of her dorm.

"Hmm?" Clara sounded.

"Kodi Jones, that's my real name." Kodi told, not noticing the smallest of smiles appear on Clara's muzzle.

Five minutes later Clara had parked in the guest parking lot next to the art school dorms but before she could switch off the engine Kodi had already got out of the car and was sprinting through the snow to his sister's dorm building. Clara locked her car and jogged after the worried wolf, she entered the building to see a dozen or so mammals gathered around a doorway which she assumed led to the common room where Kodi's sister was, she could already someone crying. A crowd was the last thing that was needed right now, so she decided to use her skills as a professor to disperse the mammals, she cleared her throat and declared "Can you please go back to your own business, this a private matter and I'm sure the young lady doesn't appreciate an audience."

Some of the mammals gave bashful looks and scurried away while a couple looked at Clara with irked confusion, a mink asked "Who are you?"

"A visiting professor from Zootopia Met and if you don't want me to inform your teachers that you hampered the recovery of a mammal having an anxiety attack I suggest you leave." Clara said with the authority she had gained through teaching. This did the trick and the stragglers quickly left for the safety of their rooms, with the gawkers gone Clara peered into the doorway to check on Kodi but was surprised by what she saw. In the room a camel looked on with fretful look, Clara assumed this was Ayesha, Kodi was knelt in front of crying and hyperventilating girl around nineteen years old but she wasn't a wolf like Clara was expecting but a lithe and beautiful antelope with long black horns with curls of ginger fur sprouting from between them. "Sasha, I need you to open your eyes." Kodi willed in a calm voice.

"No…no…" Sasha wheezed between sobs, her eyes were clasped shut out of fear.

"It's ok, it's all ok." Kodi soothed, putting the old digital camera in his sister's hooves "You'll be able to see what's coming."

Sasha peeked open one eye before letting out a cry of relief and quickly switching the camera on, she looked through the lens a couple of times and her breathing became more steady. She looked at Kodi and Ayesha with tearful green eyes and whimpered "I'm sorry.."

"Hey, hey, don't apologise." Kodi eased, hugging her "All that matters is that your safe."

"We're going to get that jerk that mugged you." Ayesha blustered "But I'll hold off calling the cops until you feel a little better."

Forty minutes the cops had arrived and Sasha felt comfortable enough to give a statement, Kodi went outside the dorm to update Clara what was going on "She's talking to the police now." He said, sounding relieved.

"That's good, she seemed to calm down a lot with you here." Clara said, noticing that Kodi wasn't fully relaxed he kept on looking back into the building with worry "Got to say though I was surprised when I saw what species she was, I honestly thought she'd be a wolf."

"We get that a lot, even Olivia was surprised the first time she met Sasha." Kodi remembered before clearing up "We're both adopted, but you probably already figured that."

Clara just nodded and gave a small smile before saying "I'll head off now, you focus on your sister, I'll smooth things over with Agent Rojek."

Clara went to walk away when Kodi spoke up "Wait, Clara. I need to say something."

"Yes?" Clara replied, turning to see Kodi's expression was one of shame.

"I was a complete asshole to you yesterday, what I said wasn't right and even though I said those things you still helped me out today. What I'm trying to say is sorry and thank you." Kodi struggled, feeling humbled by the good natured professor.

Clara could sense that his apology was sincere, she nodded and replied "Apology accepted, now go be with your sister."

Kodi seemed relieved that his apology had been accepted and flashed a small smile before walking back into the dorm building. Clara then continued over to her car with one thought in her head; The Mage could be a jerk but Kodi Jones might be a nice guy.

000

Robyn was overly aware that she reeked of house cleaning products, she had scrubbed the small house in Sherwood from top to bottom for four solid hours before social services arrived to inspect if the home was a clean and safe environment for Aaron to spend the night. Both Robyn and Hannah waited anxiously as the two inspectors walked through the house, taking note of everything on their clipboards and what made it worse was they did it silence. After thirty minutes, a stuffy looking mongoose came over and handed Robyn a sheet of paper before saying "You've passed the inspection with flying colours."

Robyn couldn't help but give an excited yip and Hannah was grinning from ear to ear at the news, now all they had to do was wait until 4.30pm when Kenai would bring Aaron over, he thought he was just coming for a sleepover but in fact this was a trial to see if he wanted to live with Hannah and Robyn full time and be a family.

Despite her blindness Hannah was pretty handy in the kitchen, she had prepared a vegetable lasagne for dinner with a side helping of eucalyptus leaves for Aaron, the leaves were toxic to most mammals but koalas loved to gorge on these gum textured leaves. Soon enough 4.30pm came and the married couple rushed to the front door as soon as they heard a car pull up outside, they opened the door to see an excited Aaron running up the to the house with a little rucksack on his back and his toy dinosaur Trix in his paw "Robyn! Hannah!" the little boy beamed.

"Come here, you." Robyn smiled, crouching down and wrapping the marsupial in a hug before lifting him up.

Hannah kissed Aaron on the cheek and asked "You looking forward to this sleep over?"

"Uh-huh." He nodded with a grin.

"He's been talking about it non stop for the last few days." Kenai chuckled, carrying Aaron's small suitcase and oddly a small log.

"What's with the wood?" Robyn asked curiously.

"It's my sleeping log." Aaron answered.

"Sleeping log?" Hannah repeated, puzzled.

"Before they evolved koalas used to spend all their time in trees, they like to grab hold of something when they sleep, most young koalas sleep with a log in their bed for comfort." Kenai explained.

A few minutes later Aaron and Kenai were being served drinks and treats in the living room by Robyn and Hannah, they made small talk about Aaron's day at school before Kenai brought up "So Aaron, why do you think you're sleeping over here tonight?"

"Because Hannah and Robyn are my friends." Aaron answered innocently, supping from his juice box.

"We're definitely that." Robyn concurred, pouring Kenai a cup of tea from the teapot inherited from Robin Senior.

"Well, we were thinking if you like it here it could become a more regular thing." Kenai tried to bridge.

"Huh?" Aaron sounded, scrunching up his adorable black nose.

Robyn set down the teapot and sat on the sofa with Hannah, she tapped the spot between them and Aaron took the hint and sat between the mammals. Both Hannah and Robyn held Aaron's paw as Hannah summoned her courage her and said "If you want you could live her with us all the time, we could eat together and play together, help you with your homework, go on vacation together."

"We want to adopt you Aaron, we want to be your Moms." Robyn spoke, her nerves rattling.

There was a brief silence as Aaron absorbed the new information, the stunned look on his face transformed into the widest smile he could muster, he latched onto both hybrids and cheered "I want you to be my Moms!" before erupting with laughter, Hannah and Robyn joined in with the laughter and hugged the little hero tight while Kenai looked on with satisfaction at the blossoming family.

A short time later Kenai left the house leaving the trio to enjoy their first night as a family, the dinner table was happy and full of joyful conversation, Hannah and Robyn gave Aaron a bath and put him in his adorable pyjamas that had angel wings printed on the back with the words 'Little Angel' stamped on, they then watched an animated movie about a dinosaur on Netflix before tucking the koala into bed just before eight pm. So far the sleepover had been a success and the married couple couldn't help but gush about how cute their future son was and how happy they were about Aaron wanting them as mothers.

Just as Robyn and Hannah were getting ready for bed around 11pm they heard the door to Aaron's room creek open, Hannah went onto the landing and sensed the sleepy form of Aaron "What's up little hero?" she asked sweetly.

"Need…bathroom." Aaron yawned, his brown eyes half open.

"This way." Hannah beckoned, guiding the boy over to the bathroom before closing the door to give him privacy, as soon as she heard the toilet flush she reopened the door and walked in to sense Aaron using the step to the sink to wash his paws. She smiled a grabbed her toothbrush and put a blob of toothpaste on the brush head, as she began to brush her teeth Aaron leaned over and kissed Hannah on the cheek triggering a giggle from the striped hybrid. He climbed down the step and Hannah assumed he head back to his bed but instead she felt a weight on her lower leg; Aaron had a hold of her leg with both his arms and his legs.

"Aaron?" She chuckled, taking her toothbrush out of her mouth.

"Goodnight Mom." Aaron gave a sleepy whisper before drifting off into a comfortable slumber.

Hannah's heart fluttered upon being called 'Mom', it felt new, it felt like a hug but most of all it felt right. Hannah continued to brush her teeth, she'd let Aaron snooze on her leg a little longer before putting him back in bed but for now she didn't want this perfect moment to end.

(AN/ What did you guys think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Luna and Alice finally decide on a donor, Clara gets starstruck, Arthur tries his best to keep the powered mammals safe and Robyn notices a new monster in the mirror. Please review and c ya soon...)


	6. Choices

(AN/Hey folks, it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of the broken mirror. Thank you so much to everyone who like, reviewed, reblog, faved and reviewed the last update. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 5 – Choices.**

Although Nick Wilde hadn't been a hustler for over twenty years, the charm and the tactics from that part of his life aided him in the day to day workings of being mayor. For example, he'd always treat the admin team to donuts and coffee and in return they'd keep him informed if any city councilmen tried to sneak through a shady piece of legislation, so he could stop it in it's tracks. But when Nick had heard that the social workers in charge of Robyn and Hannah adoption application were conducting their home inspection this week he used his contacts to alert him straight away if the inspection had gone well, he got the word from admin just after 4pm. So, the former hustler used his sly ways again to convince the records department in charge of births, deaths and adoptions to hand over the follow up forms for Aaron's adoption to him so that he could have the honour of passing them to his daughter and daughter in-law in person and hopefully get his first meeting with his future grandson. Of course, when Judy heard about this, she wanted in on her dumb fox's plan.

"Pull over here, Ben." Nick instructed to his dingo bodyguard Ben from the backseat.

"Yes, sir." Ben replied, parking outside Nick's childhood home in Sherwood.

"Do you think they're awake yet?" Judy asked anxiously, peering for any sign of the couple or the cute koala.

"I'm guessing so, I mean they've got to drop the little guy off at school." Nick assumed, hiding his nerves well.

There was a spell of quiet in the car which was broken by Ben "I don't mean to be rude but will you two stop acting like chickens and go up to the door?"

Judy looked embarrassed at being called out while Nick chuckled "A fox acting like a chicken? Well we can't have that." The Wildes got out of the car and started walking towards the front door when they spotted another car pull up with very familiar occupants.

"Jack and Skye?" Judy mumbled as they got out of the car "What the heck are you two doing here?"

"I'm guessing it's the same reason why you two are here." Jack said, hopping out of the car and fixing his tie.

"To meet our grandchild." Skye smiled, closing the driver's door "Looks like we both had the same idea."

"Bingo." Nick grinned, holding up the manila envelope with the follow up forms in "I'm going to hand them some more forms that social services wants them to fill out."

"Ugh, who knew there was so much bureaucracy in getting a kid." Jack huffed, his hatred of paperwork was well known.

"Well, lucky for Robyn and Hannah, Nick fast tracked the adoption process a few years back after The Wave." Judy commented, before looking to the front door "So are we ready for this?"

"Let's not stand on ceremony." Skye psyched herself up, taking the lead and going up to the front door.

Just as she was about to knock the door, it unlocked and opened revealing the bemused face of Hannah "Morning, Mom." She greeted dryly.

"Oh h-hey, sweetie." Skye reacted awkwardly "We were…"

"…You, Dad and Nick and Judy showed up, so you could meet Aaron." Hannah finished, crossing her arms "I've got super hearing, remember? I mean seriously, you guys could've just asked."

"Alright, you caught us, we're sorry for being sneaky." Nick admitted, holding up his paws before passing Hannah the envelope "Social services want's you to fill these out for the next stage of the adoption process, I made sure they put in a brail copy for you."

"Thanks Nick, I'd invite you all in for a coffee but we're about to leave for Aaron's school." Hannah replied, setting the envelope on a small table next to the door.

Judy was about to add an apology for showing up unannounced when she noticed a small fuzzy face grinning at her from behind Hannah's legs "Hi." Aaron greeted, his big brown eyes shining.

Judy let out a small excited squeak before responding "Hi there, little guy.", he was even cuter in person.

Normally Aaron would be the shy type, he had never these mammals before, but he did know them. When the koala had tapped into Hannah and Robyn's memories he learned all about their parents, so he felt like he already knew the Wildes and the Savages. He stepped outside and looked up at his four future grandparents, who were trying their best to contain their emotions, pointed to each of them and said, "Your name's Judy, you're Nick, you're Skye and you're Jack."

Jack knelt down so he was eye level with five-year-old and smiled warmly "That's right and you must be Aaron, we've all be looking forward to meeting you. Did Hannah and Robyn tell you about us?"

"Nope, I read Mom's memories." Aaron answered honestly, oblivious that it sounded so strange.

"Read memories?" Nick uttered, thinking he misheard the child.

"Mom?" Skye squealed with excitement, both her and Judy looked like they were about to burst with happiness.

"Yeah, Aaron called it me when he was half asleep last night, then at breakfast he started calling Robyn Mom as well." Hannah explained with pride, stroking the marsupial's very fluffy head "I think he liked his first sleepover and he just has to stay a couple more weeks at the Children's home before he's here permanently."

"Um Mom, why are they moving like that, did they need the bathroom?" Aaron asked, both Judy and Skye were hopping on the spot with joy, unable to contain their happiness.

"Well I can't see, but I assume that my Mom and Judy want a hug, you think you can help them out?" Hannah suggested, imagining the expressions on the two future grandmothers' faces.

"Ok." Aaron chirped, opening his arms.

Judy and Skye didn't need to be prompted, they went straight in for a group hug, gently wrapping their arms around the boy. Judy could smell that both Robyn and Hannah had scent marked Aaron, claiming him as their son, the doe's heart was swelling with glee as she gave her new grandson a peck on the cheek and said, "You can call me Grandma Judy, ok?"

"And I'm your Granny Skye." Skye added, close to tears. The arctic vixen had been through so much just have Hannah, she never dared to dream about a grandchild but now he was here it felt so natural.

"Suppose, I'll be Grandad Nick." Nick said, smiling at the happy scene.

"And I'm Grandpa Jack." Jack rounded off, wiping away a lone tear from the corner of his eye.

The sweet moment was brought to an abrupt end by the sound of Robyn hollering "Hannah, Aaron, get in the car, we have to go, or we'll be late!" Then Robyn came down the stairs with Aaron's suitcase in one hand and his sleeping log in another.

"We're ready Princess, we just had some unexpected visitors." Hannah replied.

"Huh? What are you guys…" Robyn began to ask.

"We were being nosy and wanted to meet this little fella." Nick answered before Robyn even finished asking the question.

"Figures." Robyn rolled her eyes

"It was good thing they stopped by Mom, now I've got a Grandma, a Granny, a Grandad and a Grandpa." Aaron informed happily causing a smile to form on every adult's face.

"All right, lets get this little hero to school." Hannah announced, letting Robyn pass so she could get to the car.

"Aaron, where's your schoolbag?" Robyn asked, opening the trunk.

"Oops, I forgot." Aaron blushed before extending his paw out to the open doorway and in an instant the schoolbag flew from out of the house and into his paw. Aaron skipped happily to the car, clueless to the wonder he had stoked in his new grandparents.

"Aaron, remember what we said about powers?" Hannah reminded, locking the front door.

"But I'm at home." Aaron countered.

"He's got you there." Robyn smirked, fastening Aaron into the child booster seat that she had bought the day before.

"He's just showing off because you guys are here." Hannah said before kissing both her parents on the cheek "Sorry but we've got to dash, I'll call you after my show ends, ok?"

"Ok sweetie." Skye answered on impulse watching Hannah get into the car.

"He has powers too?" Judy mumbled.

"Well Aleks did mention it." Jack remembered, feeling daft that he had forgotten the detail.

"I think it's perfect," Nick smiled "no wonder Hannah calls him a little hero; a super son with super moms."

"Our little hero." Skye concluded, hugging onto Jack and wondering if it was possible to develop a love for someone you barely knew in an instant?

000

Kodi had spent the night at his parent's mansion in the meadowlands, his father Wade had suggested a family dinner and movie night might make the traumatized Sasha feel a little better. It seemed to have worked because the young photographer was smiling by the end of the dinner and had fallen asleep hugging onto her mother, Gazelle, on the large sofa in the home cinema. Wade and Gazelle had no plans for the next day and said they would take Sasha shopping for a new camera before driving her back to her art school dorm. It was the following morning and Kodi was walking to subway to catch a train back to Savannah central, so he could open the garage, normally he would drive but seeing as his regular car was parked at his apartment and he couldn't summon Bella in his street clothes he begrudgingly had to use public transport. As he walked down the street his mind drifted back to the memories of yesterday, specifically Clara.

Even though he was happy that she had accepted his apology he still felt bad for what he had said, sure he had been shot down before but this wasn't just a rebuff of advances, Clara had explained why it was wrong and Kodi knew she was right. Kodi had been using the same player mentality since he started being interested in she wolves at thirteen, he hadn't progressed, he hadn't matured, his parents' lessons about treating females with respect had flown straight over his head, Kodi was in his twenties now but still acted like a thirteen-year-old. It was this realisation that made the wolf both sad and enlightened, sad because he realised what a jerk he had been and enlightened that he wanted to change, he wanted to be a better mammal, he wanted to be someone worthy of being in a loving relationship. Kodi had slept with many lovers but never once had a girlfriend, despite his love of shipping other couples he always forbid himself from getting in one himself, but he never knew why. The wolf was ready to open his heart, but the trouble now would be finding someone he truly clicked with, he thought briefly _What about Clara?_ But quickly dismissed it. Clara was beautiful, witty and kind but he was convinced he had blown his chances of ever getting a date with the physicist, all he hoped for now was friendship.

"Kodi?" A voice asked to the left of him, he turned to Clara stepping out a deli with a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel in one paw and cup of coffee in the other "I thought that was you."

"Hey, I didn't know you lived in the Meadowlands." Kodi said, feeling off balance by his crush's sudden appearance.

"Yeah, I've got a place just around the corner, what about you?" Clara asked, taking a sip of her coffee.

"Nah, my parent's live here, I stopped over when my dad suggested a family dinner to cheer up Sasha." Kodi answered, he could still see his family's mansion down the road.

"How is she?" Clara asked in a caring manner.

"She's better, still shaken up though. My parents are taking her shopping for a new camera today." Kodi asked, still sounding worried about his little sister.

Then a voice reached Kodi's ears, a voice that was familiar and usually comforting but in this instance, it sent him into panic mode " _Mijo."_ The voice called from down the street.

Kodi's ears went flat against his skull, the fur on his tail stood on end and he uttered "No."

"Something wrong?" Clara queried, taking a bite out of her bagel.

Kodi turned to see his mother trotting down the street towards him with a plastic bag in her hoof "It's my Mama." he answered before gulping.

Kodi looked down the street and mumbled "Your Mom? I don't see a wolf…wait isn't that…"

A slightly breathless Gazelle stopped in front of Kodi and panted "I'm glad I caught you before you got on the train, you forgot the _Sudado de Pollo_ I boxed up for you."

" _Gracias_ Mama, it totally slipped my mind." Kodi thanked quickly, hoping his mom would leave just as quick.

"And I've put some leftover tamales in there, you just have to reheat them." Gazelle instructed, it was then that she noticed a gorgeous sand furred wolf looking at her with a dumbfounded expression "Who's this?"

"This is Clara." Kodi introduced, knowing better than to hide anything from his mother.

"And let me guess, you just struck up a 'Friendly' conversation with this girl?" Gazelle said, her eyes narrowing at her playboy son.

"Mama it's not like that-" Kodi started to answer.

Gazelle hoof then pinched and held Kodi's ear before she growled in Spanish " **How many times have I heard that lie? 'Mama it's not like that'? You're taking me for a fool and want to take advantage of this sweet girl?"**

" **Ouch! Mama, she's a friend from work, we just bumped into each other!"** Kodi explained, wincing at the sharp pain.

" **More lies? Her paws are way too clean to be a mechanic."** Gazelle parried, still having a tight hold of Kodi's ear.

" **My other job! She's helping the team with a case, she's a scientist."** Kodi answered, thankfully those words caused Gazelle to let go of his ear.

"You're a scientist?" Gazelle queried, not sure whether to believe her son.

"Y-yes Mrs. Jones, I'm Professor Bloom, I work with your son." Clara answered, realising she was grinning like an idiot.

Gazelle gave a sheepish look to her eldest child and apologized " _Lo siento,_ I jumped to conclusions."

"It's all right," Kodi replied, rubbing his sore ear "look I've got to head to work, so…"

"Oh right, sorry again," Gazelle realised, kissing Kodi on the cheek before turning to Clara and adding "and I'm sorry you had to see that Professor, I'm a bit of a nightmare mom."

"Oh, don't worry about it Mrs. Jones, and, uh, I just want to say I'm a huge fan." Clara babbled, rendered starstruck by the songstress and not caring about the ear pulling incident.

"Please call me Gazelle, it's so nice to hear this generation is still into my music." Gazelle smiled sweetly, putting a hoof on Clara's shoulder.

"Clara! I mean m-my name's Clara Mrs. Jo- I mean Gazelle." Clara garbled, tripping over her own words.

"It was nice to meet you Clara," Gazelle bid farewell, as she was walking away she added "text me later _Mijo."_

"Sure." Kodi replied unenthusiastically, as soon as Gazelle was out of ear shot he looked at Clara and said, "I'm so sorry about that, my Mama can be a bit old school when it comes to parenting."

In response Clara began to unexpectedly laugh "Holy crap, I just met Gazelle."

Kodi thanked his lucky stars that Clara was more focused on the celebrity status of his mother instead of the awkward interaction "Never had you pegged as a fangirl." Kodi changed the subject, wanting to shift away from the embarrassment.

"I'm full of surprises," Clara shrugged, taking another bite of her bagel "and so are you, it would seem."

"Really?" Kodi replied "I'm pretty normal really, apart from my night job."

"No, that's not it." Clara mused, looking Kodi in the face "Your other job is a big part of your life but I'm more surprised by the real you."

"Well, uh, I mean…" Kodi couldn't string a sentence together, she was looking right at him with a mischievous smile and intrigued light brown eyes.

Clara held out her bagel and coffee and requested "Hold these for a second."

Kodi did as he was told and replied "Sure."

Clara then proceeded to get a post it pad and a pen from her purse and quickly scribbled something down before ripping off the post it note and sticking it on Kodi's forehead, before he could react Clara took her coffee and bagel and walked off towards her car saying "Catch you later, Kodi."

As Clara walked away Kodi peeled off the sticky note off his forehead and when he read it his eyes bulged, it was a phone number, Clara's phone number. "What?" He whispered to himself in utter confusion. In all his years Kodi had never been given a phone number without asking for it and now it happened it was from a she wolf that he figured to be uninterested in him.

000

Both Luna and Kion had spent the day as their heroic alter egos, guarding Clara while she worked and both of them had found it boring. But during the boring guard duty the two friends arranged for Alice to head over to Jasiri and Kion's apartment around the time their guard shift finished, so the friends could catch up outside of their hero work.

Luna and Kion arrived at the apartment to find Alice and Jasiri sat on the couch with mugs of coffee while Mufasa was rummaging through a box of Christmas decorations, eager to get the apartment looking festive. About an hour later Kion had put up the Christmas tree and Luna and Mufasa were helping put on the decorations while Jasiri and Alice chatted about her upcoming pregnancy.

"So, this is the guy, huh? Nigel Kingfield?" Jasiri asked, looking at the piece of paper Alice had handed over, in the corner was a picture of black and white furred buck rabbit along with some personal details.

"That's the donor me and Luna have agreed upon." Alice confirmed "He used to be on the track team of his school and college, so he's got good athletic genes."

"And he's got a master's in computer engineering and works for one of the biggest tech companies in the city." Luna added, being lifted up by the unnaturally strong Mufasa so she could put the decorations higher up on the tree.

"So, he ticks both the smart and sporty boxes, nice." Jasiri said, handing the paper back to Alice "So when do you get knocked up?"

Alice chuckled slightly at the crude wording before answering "In a couple of days, then by January I'll be giving birth."

"Wait, January?" Jasiri gawped "How long are rabbits pregnant for?"

"Between 25 and 28 days." Alice answered, "So in less than a month me and Luna could be mothers."

"Are you and Alice going to have a baby?" Mufasa asked, setting Luna down on the floor.

"Yep, but it's more likely to be a few babies, bunnies have litters." Luna answered, her excitement clear in her voice.

Mufasa's eyes went wide at this information and asked further "So how many baby bunnies will there be? 10? 20? 100?"

Kion let out a chuckle then answered, "Bunnies tend to have four to eight babies in their first litter."

"How did you know that?" Alice asked, puzzled that a lion would know such a thing.

"I looked it up, me and Jasiri were looking up baby clothes to buy for your litter and we wanted to know how many to get." Kion answered with a smile as he untangled some Christmas lights.

"Aww, guys. That's so sweet, thank you." Luna thanked.

"Well we have to get in points in we want to be godparents." Jasiri half joked.

"Throw in some babysitting and we'll think about it." Alice jested, she looked at Luna decorating the tree and pictured a similar scene a year from now but the only difference being baby bunnies crawling around her feet.

000

It had been nearly two days since Earl's gruesome death but the hurt and grief hadn't dissipated among Arthur's group. When Arthur returned to the abandoned furniture store and told them what had happened it hit them like a bombshell and ever since they had been in state of grief. Arthur had been especially worried about Jason, the twelve-year-old caracal boy, who had been crying on and off for the last two days. Jason and Earl had been close, with the pig taking care of the boy like a grandfather would, Earl was the one mammal in the group that could always make the child smile but now he was gone.

While Arthur's paw was gently rubbing against his pendent he was sat on a tatty and stained armchair keeping a watch on both the back door and Jason as he slept on a bed with springs poking out of the mattress, the young feline had cried himself to sleep for the second night in a row. "He's finally worn himself out then?" Brenda asked, the donkey had been trying to comfort the boy throughout the day but had failed.

"Yeah, poor kid." Arthur replied, sounding halfway between depressed and angry.

"You doing ok? You've barely eaten or slept since you got back." Brenda fussed.

"I'm not ok, neither is Jason, neither are you or the others." Arthur stated, looking at the three other mammals in the group, huddling up for warmth around an electric heater.

"You're just drained, have some food, we've still got leftovers from supper." Brenda offered, nodding at the large pot of soup that she had boiled up earlier.

"I don't think food will fix this." Arthur said, looking over at Jason again and saying, "This is no way to live, that kid should be with his family, getting hyped for Christmas instead he's forced to hide in this hellhole."

"But at least he's alive." Brenda tried to ease.

"You call this living?" Arthur snapped, startling the donkey "How long can we do this? How long can we hide? Are we supposed to be on the streets forever?"

"We and our loved ones are safer if we hide, we can't trust the authorities, each one of us who went to seek help never came back." Brenda affirmed, the loud back and forth had alerted the other powered mammals who were now listening intently to the two that were often seen as the leaders of the group.

"That rule of not trusting anyone got Earl killed…I should've taken Chief Wilde's help when she offered it, but no I had to be paranoid and run off." Arthur lamented.

"The cops can't be trusted; the government controls the machines." Brenda responded.

"But we don't know that for sure, it's only our own fear making us think that." Arthur countered "Team Ceartais work with the cops yet Spitfire tried to save us and was nearly killed in the process…they want to help us."

"So, what are you saying? We hand ourselves into the cops?" Brenda asked, sounding stressed.

"I'm saying we go to Judy Wilde for help, she's the only cop I trust 100%." Arthur corrected.

"But…But what if we don't want to!? We always vote our next move." Brenda questioned, her fear apparent in her voice.

"This is no longer a democratic situation, fear and paranoia are going to get us killed so I'm taking a stand and asking for help. If you want to stay here and rot for the rest of your days so be it but I'm going to make sure Jason, the others and everyone else in Zootopia like us has an actual life without fear or paranoia….only freedom." Arthur stated, standing up and looking at the other powered mammals while putting his pendent back around his neck.

There was brief silence while Brenda shared a knowing look with the others, she then sighed "Ok Arthur, we'll do it your way."

"Alright," Arthur nodded "if we're going to do this we'll have to do it right, now Chief Wilde always heads to city hall every Friday for a meeting with the mayor, we'll lay in wait and hand ourselves over there."

000

Robyn Wilde had only found her talent for cooking once she had moved out of her parent's home, back there Judy and Nick always took turns in cooking meals so her and Luna never really got any chance to cook. However once Robyn had married and moved into her departed grandparent's home she would often be found in the kitchen trying out a new recipe and Hannah would always be there to taste test and give her brutality honest opinion on her wife's cooking.

"Ok, so I'm trying some new spices in this paella, what do you think?" Robyn asked, sounding a little anxious as Hannah picked up the wooden spoon and took a bite of the Spanish dish.

Hannah chewed the seafood paella for a few moments the answered "I like it, it's way better than your last attempt."

"Oh, come on, the last one wasn't that bad." Robyn huffed.

"Princess, you soaked the last paella in way too much squid ink." Hannah giggled, she then leaned in and gifted a quick kiss "But this one is lovely, thank you."

"Trying to charm me, babe?" Robyn grinned back as she felt Hannah snake her arms around her waist.

"Well, seeing as in a few weeks we won't have the house to ourselves anymore I was thinking we could make the most of our alone time." Hannah flirted, reaching up and beginning to unbutton Robyn's flannel shirt.

"Cheeky." Robyn breathed, letting Hannah run her teeth across her neck in a lustful manner while her paws continued to undress the red furred hybrid.

"You love it." Hannah whispered, unbuttoning Robyn's jeans while guiding her to the living room to the comfort of the sofa where she playfully pushed Robyn onto it.

Robyn let out a giddy laugh as Hannah stepped back and began to strip, Robyn sat back and watched as he wife performed her seductive dance. Suddenly the love filled scene was shattered, Robyn's pulse had hastened with fear as she looked in the mirror behind Hannah to find that her wife's reflection was replaced with a tall and slender creature with long blonde hair flowing from it's head. Robyn let out a small scream and scrambled back.

"Robyn?" Hannah asked with a gasp, stopping her striptease and rushing over to Robyn's aid.

"Don't!" Robyn barked, covering her eyes "Oh god…"

"Robyn, what's wrong?" Hannah asked fretfully, worried for her love.

Robyn removed the paws from over her eyes and saw the new monster had vanished from view and there was only Hannah's reflection. Robyn looked at Hannah's worried face and sighed "Babe, I need to tell you something."

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! A new monster in the mirror!? What did you folks think!? Please please please review! Next time on TBM; Kodi and Clara get to know each other more, Hannah has an idea about Robyn's monster visions, Andraste has to defuse a deadly situation and Arthur's group surrender themselves to Judy. Please review and c ya soon...)


	7. Something New

(AN/ Hey folks it's garouge/crewefox with another chapter of The Broken Mirror, I want to thank everyone who submitted questions about the fic on tumblr and also to those who liked, faved, followed, reblogged and reviewed the last chapter. It's been a stressful week with exams, a house move and a heat wave in the uk but i've finally finished chapter.)

 **Chapter 6- Something new.**

Robyn came clean about her mirror 'Monsters' to Hannah, it didn't take that long but in those few minutes Hannah hadn't spoken a word, she had only listened. Robyn was rambling due to the fact that she had bottled it up for so long, only ever revealing it before to her sister Luna but telling Hannah felt different. Of course, it felt different, Hannah was the most important mammal in Robyn's life "And so that's it, I'm probably going nuts." Robyn finished, finally looking at Hannah who sat on the couch with her.

Hannah's face did not display fear of what her wife told her nor any anger from keeping it a secret, instead her face showed puzzlement like she had been stumped by a riddle "You're not going nuts." Hannah spoke with a focused voice.

"Babe, I know you're trying to be nice but let's be realistic. Maybe I should see if Luna can put me in contact with someone." Robyn lamented, hiding her face with her long rabbit like ears.

Hannah heard the sadness in her beloved's tone and took her paw, kissed her on the lips gently and reaffirmed "You're not going crazy, I know it."

"But how can you think that?" Robyn asked, sure that Hannah was just being comforting.

"Look the thing that makes the most sense is this all started after the purple rain incident, after you got hit by that weird cloud. It has to be connected." Hannah answered with certainty.

"...You think?" Robyn asked sounding a little hopeful.

"Powered mammals started showing up after that day, what's to say what you're experiencing isn't a power?" Hannah proposed.

"So, my power is to see creepy things in mirrors?" Robyn asked back, sounding unconvinced.

"I know it sounds farfetched, but our entire lives are farfetched, maybe we should ask Professor Bloom what she thinks." Hannah suggested.

"You honestly think that is all related to powers?" Robyn asked, still sounding unsure.

"It's the one that makes the most sense and even though the professor's field is in physics she seems to have some ideas about the purple cloud." Hannah convinced "Look we're both on guard duty with her the day after tomorrow, we can pick her brain then."

"…It's actually a big relief to hear that I'm not hallucinating things." Robyn submitted to Hannah's mindset.

Hannah then pulled Robyn into an embrace letting her wife's head rest upon her chest "Listen up Princess, you ever get spooked like this again, come to me. I might not be able to fight the monsters but I can provide kisses and snuggles to make you feel better."

"My blind badass knight," Robyn replied with a warm smile, sinking further into the hug that made her feel at ease "thank you for saving me yet again."

"Is there any chance this knight can whisk her princess to the royal bedchambers?" Hannah jest and flirted in the same breath to which she received a knowing smile from the red furred hybrid.

000

The following day Robyn and Kodi weren't due in the garage until midday, the two were so trusting of Oggie and the two other mechanics in their employ that they knew their business was in good hands. So, what do two mammals who fix vehicles all day do with a morning off? Work on another vehicle of course. The two best friends were in the main atrium of Team Ceartais' bunker where they were tinkering with the highly modified pick up truck known officially as the 'Shooting Star III' but was always called Bella due to the bunker's artificial intelligence who often controlled the truck to assist the team.

"I'm telling you there was a delay with boosters last time I was in a chase, it took way too long for them to kick in." Kodi informed, looking at the laptop screen on the work bench as Bella ran a diagnostic on the truck while Robyn looked under the hood for any physical damage.

"You know every car chase doesn't require a nitrous boost, this baby has enough power to catch most cars." Robyn criticised the wolf's driving habits.

"If you got it, use it." Kodi parried.

"Ah, here's the problem, the nitrous tube has been kinked, no wonder there's a delay." Robyn informed "We've got spares of these, right?"

"Should have some in the tool cabinet." Kodi answered, nodding at the tool cabinet beside the metal stairs to the observation deck, as he watched Robyn fetch the new spare part he asked out of the blue "Hey do you remember back in high school when I kept you being bi a secret?"

"Uh, yeah. Why do you ask?" Robyn asked back, confused by the randomness of the question.

"Well I kept it secret because we're best friends, so if I was to tell you something could you keep it secret?" Kodi asked, avoiding eye contact.

"Of course, dude." Robyn answered, not remembering an occasion when Kodi sounded so uneasy.

"So, I've got this date tonight and well, I feel a little out of my depth." Kodi opened.

"You? Dude you've been on like a million dates, you're Mr. Suave on a date." Robyn responded, sure that there was more to the story.

"Usually I'm confident but this date is different. She asked me out, she's picked the venue which is a mystery to me and she's picking me up from my place." Kodi unloaded.

"So, this is your first date where you haven't been in control? Does control mean that much to you?" Robyn asked, sounding interested. Usually when Kodi ever talked about she wolves it was in a lewd manner but Kodi seemed genuinely nervous and Robyn couldn't help but find that refreshing and a little bit cute.

"Not really, it's just I want this date to go well, I want to make a good impression and I can't do that if I don't know what's coming." Kodi confided.

"Who is this wolf that's got you so worked up?" Robyn asked, wondering which female could make the playboy wolf act like this.

"…I don't want to say, look if my date goes well tonight I'll tell you all about her tomorrow." Kodi avoided.

"Ok," Robyn accepted, not wanting to push the subject "look my advice is simple and cliché but be yourself…and try not to be an asshole."

"That's what I'm worried about, if I slip back into my old habits and crappy pick up lines." Kodi sighed.

"Hang on a second, you're not just crushing on this wolf, you like her!" Robyn accused with a gleeful voice.

"N-no!" Kodi reacted in a childish manner.

"Oh my god, you do!" Robyn squealed before rushing over and hugging her friend "I knew it would happen one day, the player Kodi Jones wants a proper girlfriend."

"Please stop talking." Kodi groaned, feeling embarrassed.

"Look dude, I'm being serious here; you're going to do great tonight and once this she-wolf sees who you really are she'll be smitten too." Robyn assured.

The happy moment between the lifelong friends was brought to an abrupt end when the rodent sized elevator to the atrium opened up and a frazzled and frustrated Olivia came stomping out while swearing "That stupid piece of shit mech, can't handle a wee bit of stress testing before the pissing power core fails like a limp dick!"

"Good morning to you to, Olivia." Robyn sniggered down at the enraged engineer "Another productive morning in the lab?"

"Wait, it's morning?" Olivia reacted, getting out her phone and letting out another angry moan when she that it was just past ten am "And another night of sleep lost to that pile of crap I call a mech!"

"Is the new model not passing the test runs?" Kodi asked, sounding more sympathetic than Robyn.

"Is it hell, it's get through 90% of tests then it starts to lose power. I need this new model working if I'm ever to stand a chance against those robots." Olivia explained, fishing out a candy bar from her grease covered overalls, quickly unwrapping it and began to stress eat "Anyway what were you two hugging about?"

"Well…uh, I have a date." Kodi answered, hoping his team leader might offer some sage advice.

"Date? Christ, don't bother, stick to playing the field." Olivia said bitterly before raving "You keep shagging around lad, don't be a fool like me and get into a relationship like I did, then give four years of your life to someone you think you'll grow old with only to be dumped when you prioritise being a hero than being someone's partner!"

Kodi and Robyn were left stunned by the ravings of the brown mouse, there was a few seconds of silence before Kodi queried "You ok?"

Olivia seemed to come back into focus and realised what she said, she looked away and made an excuse "Ignore me, I'm angry, hungry and sleep deprived. Good luck on your date." She then scurried away towards the showers in the dorm area of the bunker.

"You think she's still feeling the burn of Blake dumping her?" Robyn asked rhetorically.

"Yeah…she seems so strong but I guess she's still hurting even after a year." Kodi sympathised.

"Maybe they just weren't meant to be." Robyn said before nudging the wolf and adding "And maybe you and this mystery wolf are fated to be together.

000

It was just after seven pm and Kodi was stood outside his Savannah central apartment, he was dressed in his best jeans and a nice shirt, figuring that the most likely venue for this date would be a nice restaurant or maybe a trip to the museum or art gallery due to Clara's intelligence. Kodi was tapping his foot in a nervous manner, he had never felt so uneasy before a date before, he still was doubting that Clara was actually interested in him despite her arranging the date. He was pulled from thoughts by the beep of a car horn, he looked to see Clara pulling up, Kodi hurried over and entered the car to see Clara dressed in a stylish and figure hugging black dress. "Wow…you look wow." Kodi spoke and immediately regretted, figuring he must sound like an idiot.

"Thanks, you scrub up well yourself." Clara chuckled before pulling out and driving down the street.

Kodi relaxed a little when he saw Clara's dress, it looked expensive and the type of dress that someone would wear to nice restaurant "So are we going to get something to eat?" Kodi probed.

"Later, I've got something else planned first." Clara replied with a sly smile.

Ten minutes later Clara parked her car in a small parking lot next to a run-down warehouse with a Thai food truck parked outside "We're here." Clara grinned, turning off the engine.

A flummoxed Kodi looked at the sign on the warehouse that read 'Urban Paintball ltd.' Then asked "Paintball? We're going to play paintball?"

"Yeah, this place is so fun, you'll love it." Clara chirped.

"B-but your dress, I thought we were going somewhere fancy." Kodi garbled.

"This dress has two functions the first is to throw you off and secondly it makes me feel awesome." Clara smiled, enjoying both the confusion and enraptured look in Kodi's eyes.

Kodi had to admit it was a great power move, he now knew there was no point in predicting what was going to happen next on this date, he submitted to Clara's will and smiled back "Lead the way."

Just over an hour and a half later Kodi and Clara were sat at a small plastic table next to the food truck gorging into some fresh and spicy food. The two wolves were still garbed in the black overalls they wore over their clothes in the paintball arena the only difference was Clara only had a few paint blotches on her while Kodi was covered in green paint dots "Still sore?" Clara asked, before taking a bite of her chicken massaman curry.

"I bet I'm bruised all under my fur." Kodi gave a pained laugh while chewing his seafood pad Thai.

"That's what you get for showing mercy to those kids." Clara pointed out.

"What was I supposed to do, shoot the kid? It was his birthday." Kodi parried, the wolf had cornered a tapir with a birthday pin on his overalls, when he had hesitated the tapir shot Kodi and so did the rest of his friends that had come for his birthday party.

"You're too kind for your own good." Clara stated with a smile "So as a first date, was it a good choice as an activity?"

"Yeah it was fun but knowing you, you probably chose paintballing to access me or something." Kodi answered confidently.

Clara feigned shock "Oh no, you've figured me out. But maybe I should've took Hannah's word from the beginning, you are a sweet guy."

"Well she has known me since we were three years old." Kodi replied, feeling happy that Clara thought he was sweet.

Clara took a quick sip of her soda then changed subject "So did Hannah mention how we knew each other?"

"You were the faculty advisor for the LGBTQ society when Stripes was at college, right?" Kodi remembered.

"And do you know why I was the liaison?" Clara asked further, sounding a little more serious than her usual playful tone.

"Because you're pansexual and transgender." Kodi answered, still feasting on his food.

"…Right." Clara sounded, looking perplexed.

Kodi read his date's expression and sounded "What?"

"Sorry it's just whenever I go on a date with a straight guy they always ask a ton of awkward questions, you're the first guy that's never asked about it." Clara explained.

"I'm not going to lie; I'm interested in finding out about your transition. But I'm ok with whatever you're comfortable telling me." Kodi said, not wanting to pressure Clara on the very personal subject.

"Wow…damn, that's actually really nice of you." Clara said, touched by Kodi's positive attitude "Well I guess I can tell you some stuff; I came out as trans in junior high, my parents and siblings were really supportive and helped me start my transition. Not going to lie I was bullied for a while, but my family were always there for me when I needed a hug or needed to vent."

"That sounds tough, I can't even imagine what you went though." Kodi said, he had never been a victim of bullying but always felt sympathy for those who suffered through it "But screw those bullies, I mean look at you; you're a successful and beautiful she-wolf."

"You think I'm beautiful?" Clara called out with mischief in her voice.

"…Yeah." Kodi confirmed, sounding shy. He then tried to steer the conversation to a different subject "So I've got to know, why'd you ask me out?"

Clara leaned back in her plastic chair and answered "Two reasons; one you're handsome as hell and two; I'm trying to figure you out."

"Figure me out? Like I'm a puzzle?" Kodi asked again, tilting his head slightly.

"A handsome puzzle." Clara grinned "Ok so when I first met you, you were dressed as The Mage, you acted just like I expected you to do, it's common knowledge that The Mage is the player of the team. But that doesn't match who I'm talking to right now."

"Ok yes, I have slept around a bit, but I'm not going to apologise for that." Kodi responded.

"And you shouldn't, everyone is entitled to an active sex life as long as it's consensual. But that 'Player' personality doesn't match with you Kodi. The Kodi who is a doting big brother, raised in a loving home, surrounded by good friends and who ships other mammals doesn't sound like a guy who only has time for sex and none for romance. So yeah, you don't make sense." Clara laid out her theory.

"…I guess." Kodi mumbled, his eyes growing sad.

"Oh Kodi, I'm sorry. That was mean of me, we were having a lovely time and I ruined it." Clara replied hastily, feeling awful.

"No…you're right. The player isn't me." Kodi eased "I guess seeing as you shared a few details about your transition, it's only fair that I say something personal."

"You don't have to." Clara said, wishing she could turn the clock back thirty seconds and fix her words.

"It might actually put things in perspective." Kodi gave a sad smile "So spoiler alert; I'm adopted obviously, I was put in the system not long after I was born and I was adopted by parents when I was two. My Mom and Dad are great mammals who are very open and liberal so they never tried to hide anything from me, anyway when I was thirteen I wanted to find out about my biological parents so they helped me out, they contacted social services who contacted my birth parents and they agreed to meet up. Turns out they only lived a mile away from my home, I couldn't believe it, I was so curious I begged my Dad to drive by their house just to see what they looked like. My dad eventually caved but I wish I never asked him…"

"What happened?" Clara asked, sounding intrigued yet worried.

"We drove by their house and I spotted my biological parents getting into a SUV on their driveway, but they had three other wolf cubs, all younger than me." Kodi told "I got freaked out and asked my Dad to take me home. I started to wonder why I was put up for adoption when they were going to have more kids, so I asked my Dad if he knew why. I could see the fear in his face, that he knew he was going to break my heart as soon as he told me why."

"Kodi." Clara uttered, subconsciously taking hold of the wolf's paw.

Kodi hadn't noticed his hand being held as he revealed "My parents were high school sweethearts, in their senior year my birth mom got pregnant with me. Apparently, they wanted to keep me but as it got closer and closer to the due date, they realised that their rich parents would cut them off if they had a cub out of wedlock…I was put up for adoption because my biological parents preferred money."

"Oh god." Clara breathed, gripping his paw a little tighter.

"I called off the meeting with them and made a choice, there and then. That I wouldn't get into a relationship with anyone because I was terrified if I fell in love and got a girl pregnant that I would abandon the cub, because I've got those damn genes. I know it's irrational, I know I could've made someone pregnant anyway but I was just didn't want to become my birth parents." Kodi confessed.

"You'll never be like them, you know why? Because you're better than them." Clara encouraged, it's at this point she realised she was holding Kodi's paw "Huh? When did that happen?"

"S-sorry." Kodi reacted but didn't let go "I guess such a heavy confession isn't good first date etiquette."

"Well next time let's just stick to you telling me how beautiful I am." Clara glossed over, putting her date at ease.

"Next time, you mean I'm getting a second date?" Kodi asked, pretty sure his voice sounded like a squeaky voiced teen.

"That depends on you, do you want to be a player or do you want to be yourself?" Clara asked, liking the feel of her and Kodi's paw entwined.

Kodi looked at Clara, realising all the nerves and fears were gone, he felt comfortable with her, she was funny, she was beautiful, she was perfect. It was time to let go of his past fears and try something new "I want to be me." He answered.

Clara then leaned forward across the table and used her paw to guide Kodi by the chin into a kiss, the first of many for this new couple.

000

If Luna or Alice ever went out on patrol she wouldn't go to the Bunker first to prep like their other teammates, instead they both kept a uniform and a good stash of their weapons at their penthouse and would start their patrols from there. Tonight, it was Luna and Olivia on scheduled patrol but seeing as Olivia was still trying to get her latest mech model to fly Luna had offered to patrol solo. Just before 11pm Luna got changed into her Andraste uniform, checked her quiver and bow and attached her comm link in her ear before kissing Alice for good luck, going onto the balcony and using a grapple arrow to swoop out into the city.

Andraste was only five minutes into her patrol when her comm link came to life with Bella's voice " **Andraste, I have Agent Rojek on the line."**

It was way too late for Aleks be making a friendly call, Andraste knew it must be for official business. She found a perch on a gargoyle belonging to a church's bell tower before replying "Patch him through please, Bella."

" **Andraste, you there?"** Aleks asked, sounding tense.

"I'm here, Aleks. What's up?" Andraste cut to the chase.

" **We have a powered mammal situation in Savannah Central, I'm at a crime scene now in an apartment not far from Sherwood."** Aleks hastily explained.

"What's the situation?" Andraste asked, noticing she was in the same area.

" **A young couple live in this apartment, they had an argument about something work related and well when she got mad the entire room shook before she fled, the place is trashed and her boyfriend has a massive cut on his head from shattered glass but he'll be fine."** Aleks answered.

"So, you want me to tranq and detain this mammal?" Andraste asked, spotting something strange on top of a building in the distance.

" **No, her boyfriend doesn't want to press charges he just wants her to come home, but we can't risk her getting upset and hurting someone, we need to find her and talk to her and get her help."** Aleks corrected.

"Fair enough," Andraste concurred, getting out a small set of binoculars from one of the pouches on her belt so she could get a better look at the strange thing in the distance "so what can you tell me about this mammal?"

" **Retsuko Kaolip, 25-year-old red panda accountant, moved over from Japan with her boyfriend six months ago to work at this city's branch of Katou accounting."** Aleks informed.

Andraste focused her binoculars to the building in the distance and gasped slightly when she saw a female red panda standing on the edge with tears streaming down her face "Aleks by any chance was she wearing a blue waistcoat and skirt with a white shirt?"

" **Yes, how on earth did you know that?"** Aleks asked back.

"Because I'm staring right at her; she on top of the Katou building and looking like she wants to jump." Andraste answered, swiftly tucking her binoculars away and grappling towards the accountancy firm.

" **What!? I'll get the ZPD over there!"** Aleks reacted.

"No, she's more likely to get scared if she's the cops. Let me try and talk to her." Andraste suggested, keeping out of sight as she made her way to the suicidal red panda.

Over at the building the cold night air wasn't making Retsuko shudder, it was her fear. This wasn't the tallest building in Zootopia but no one would be able to survive a fall from this height, it was a 150ft drop. " _I'm sorry Haida, I never meant to hurt you."_ Retsuko cried in her native Japanese tongue.

"You know I've been married to a Japanese mammal for four years and I still can't speak the language." A voice said out of nowhere.

Retsuko turned to her right to see a relaxed Andraste sat six feet away with her feet hanging over the edge "What!? When did you get here!?" Retsuko shrieked, not noticing that the vixen was keeping a close eye on where her feet were placed.

"Just now. You're Retsuko, right?" Andraste asked, her voice calm.

"And you're one of those heroes, Andraste?" Retsuko replied with a sniff "Are you here to bring me to the police?"

"I'm here to stop you doing something stupid." Andraste answered, wondering if she could tackle the accountant safely back onto the roof and away from the edge.

"I…I need to do this, this needs to happen, I've got to pay for what I did." Retsuko wept.

"And jumping to your death will pay your debt?" Andraste asked, deliberately engaging Retsuko in a discussion so she wouldn't focus on jumping.

"It's justice, I've taken a life now I've got to die." Retsuko sniffled.

"Took a life?" Andraste questioned.

"My boyfriend, my Haida…I killed him!" Retsuko bawled.

"Retsuko, your boyfriend is alive." Andraste revealed.

"What?" Retsuko reacted, her voice scratchy from so much crying.

"I just spoke to an MCB friend of mine he said your boyfriend is fine." Andraste reassured.

"But there was so much blood!" Retsuko cried, thinking this could be some sort of trick.

"He's got a cut to his head, that's all. He's ok, Retsuko…all he wants is for you to come home." Andraste clarified.

Retsuko was quiet for a moment before looking at her paws and uttering "I can't go back, what if I hurt him again? I can't control this power, I can't control my anger but I can control this. If I do this, mammals will be safe."

Andraste's nerves went into overdrive but she didn't show it, she thought for sure that hearing her boyfriend was alive and well would make her step away from the edge. The archer knew she had to keep Retsuko talking, so she could hopefully find a way to convince her to stop or if all else failed grab her but that was risky "What is your power?" Andraste asked.

"When I get angry, everything around me shakes, it's like I'm an earthquake…usually I have ways to deal with it but…" Retsuko fumbled between tears.

"How do you control you anger?" Andraste asked, ruling out trying to tranq the red panda in case she stumbled over the edge.

"I sing karaoke, I like death metal, it helps me get my rage out." Retsuko confessed her embarrassing secret, figuring if she was going to die it didn't matter if mammals knew.

"Well that's a lot better strategy than me, I was an angry kid who put on a costume and beat up bad guys." Andraste confided, hoping it would connect with Retsuko.

"You have anger issues?" Retsuko asked back, her eyes still streaking tears.

"Yeah, I mean normal mammals don't become super heroes without having problems in their real life. I thought by being Andraste I could channel that anger but it made it worst and that rage and my stupid pride got someone I care about killed but I didn't stop there, I went and found the mammal responsible for my friend's death and crippled him…only then did I realise what I had become." Andraste recalled, shuddering slightly as the memory of Little John's lifeless body flickered through her mind.

"I'm…I'm sorry that happened to you." Retsuko empathised.

"Take it from someone who's been there, trying to kill yourself won't solve your problem." Andraste spoke, sounding vulnerable.

"You?" Retsuko gasped, shocked that someone so heroic could go to that extreme.

"It wasn't long after I crippled that guy, I thought getting away from Zootopia would help calm my mind. I went to the country, stayed with my grandparents, I told them I had exam stress and I needed to cool off in the country. But all I could think about was what I did…I don't remember going into the orchard, but I remember taking the rope from the barn. I tried to hang myself, I put the noose around my neck and kicked the stool from underneath me…but the branch broke, I was coughing and crying when my Aunt found me. Hell did she punch me hard, I thought she'd broken my jaw." Andraste admitted, remembering the sadness and anger in her aunt Heather's eyes on that night "She took me back to the house, cleaned me up and stood watch over me for the whole night…I told my aunt everything; that I was Andraste, about the bad things I had done and after I finished she just hugged me and told me everything was going to be ok."

"And everything turned out ok? I mean you're still here." Retsuko asked, crying less about her own problems and more about the story Andraste told her.

"I am still here. But I take care of myself, I take my meds, go to therapy and talk to my wife about my problems…oh and this helps to." Andraste answered, reaching into a pouch and pulling out a joint and placing it between her lips.

"Is that marijuana?" Retsuko asked with surprise.

"Yup," Andraste chimed, lighting it up and taking a drag before exhaling "it's my one little vice."

"Sorry, it's just a little shocking." Retsuko responded.

"It's my choice to smoke this, it's my choice to go therapy and it's my choice to take my meds. You've got a choice to Retsuko and you know which option is right." Andraste proposed, hoping she had swayed the red panda.

Retsuko didn't speak, she stepped back from the edge walked over to Andraste and sat down next to her. Tears were still soaking her furry cheeks when she asked "So what happens now?"

Andraste took another drag before answering "I'm going to take you to the emergency room, you'll need to be on suicide watch for at least 24 hours but I know a doctor there who can get you a good room, Haida can stay with you to. Then the doctors will arrange therapy and prescribe you some meds, it's going to be tough but it will be worth it, trust me." Andraste then hugged Retsuko, who wept into her shoulder, thankful to the once troubled angel who had saved her.

000

Nick Wilde prided himself on being a romantic, he had been with Judy for over two decades and never once had faltered in sweeping his sly bunny off her feet. But after a while you have to get original with ideas so you don't end up recycling old romantic gestures but Nick was pretty sure this one hadn't been done before. Nick was stood in the parking lot of city hall looking smug "I can't wait to see her face." He grinned.

"Oh yeah her face will be like 'My husband is such a massive dork'." Alana Clearwater sniggered, the deputy mayor had just come back from a meeting when she found Nick in the parking lot.

"Oh, come on that's romantic." Nick huffed, pointing to Judy's spot where he had put the sign 'Reserved for the most beautiful bunny in Zootopia'

"It's corny, I'm just waiting to see Judy laugh her ass off." Alana smiled.

"Carrots will love it, she loves stuff like this." Nick assured Alana and himself, at that moment a police cruiser pulled into the parking lot, Nick could spot Judy driving as well as her eyes widening when she saw the sign.

Ten seconds later Judy had parked up and exited the cruiser why'll laughing heartedly "What the heck is that!?"

"It's…something dumb." Nick replied, feeling bashful and the fact that Alana was laughing along with Judy wasn't helping.

"Oh, Nick, come here." Judy cooed, grabbing Nick by the tie and pulling him down into a kiss.

"C-Chief Wilde!" A nervous voice alerted that Judy recognised instantly.

Judy ended the kiss and looked to the source of the voice; it was Arthur Knight walking towards her flanked by four other mammals, all with their paws raised "Knight?" She gawped, noticing the other mammals were some of the missing 17.

"We've come to hand ourselves over to you, you're the only one we can trust." Arthur declared, hoping that this was the right decision.

(AN/ So what did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Arthur's pack arrives at the ZPD, the mysterious bots resurface and Robyn is forced to make into a tough decision. Please review and c ya soon...)


	8. Protect and Serve

(an/ Hey Folks this is a super quick update because I've just got off a crazy shift at work and I need to sleep, so thank you as always for reading and without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter)

 **Chapter 7- Protect and Serve**

None of Arthur's group were under arrest but they were loaded in a paddy wagon that Arthur insisted Judy drove. The precinct 1 chief radioed ahead and made sure the wagon had two escort motorcycles and a cruiser tailing it for safety, she had also arranged for Nala and Clawhauser to make the hallways clear to the conference room near her office, there was no way she was putting these traumatised mammals in holding cells.

A half hour had past and Arthur had polished off his third bugga burger, Clawhauser had the foresight to order food for the mammals he had ordered bugga burgers for the preds and grassland salads for the prey. Even though Arthur was busy scoffing down the junk food he still kept a close eye on his group and this was picked up on by Judy "They're safe, Knight. You can relax." She eased.

"No offence Ma'am but none of them are safe until they get protection, that's why we came forward." Arthur corrected, his eyes trained on little Jason who was picking up a jelly donut from the box Clawhauser was passing around.

"Knight you should've come to me in the first place, I could've helped." Judy said, taking a sip of coffee from a 'World's greatest Grandma' mug that Nick had bought her the day before.

"Back at the beginning there was more of us, some got tired of hiding and went to the ZPD or the hospital and were never seen again, you've got to understand why we were scared." Arthur justified.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but do you know what the robots are?" Judy asked the absurd sounding question.

"I've no idea, all I know is that when any of us use a significant amount of our power they show up, so my guess is that they have some way of tracking our powers." Arthur answered.

"Right…speaking of which, what is your power?" Judy questioned, her concentration was so focused on Arthur she didn't notice that she had placed her new coffee mug off the table and onto nothing, as the mug hurtled to the ground Arthur quickly reached out one paw and the mug glowed with a blue hue before he floated it back up and placed it carefully on the conference table.

"That's my power." Arthur answered, shying away as if ashamed.

Judy was still dumbstruck but asked further "You can move things with your mind?"

"No…No I don't think that's it. It's kind of hard to explain but I can feel an energy type force around objects and possibly mammals and I can control how it moves." Arthur struggled to explain, fiddling with the shield like pendant around his neck but deep down he somewhat knew something else which he left out on purpose. "Look I know this was the last thing you were expecting this morning, but do you have any sort of concrete plan to keep my friends safe?"

"The way I see it the ZPD can't do this alone, if these robots are deadly as Spitfire tells me we'll need the rest of Team Ceartais and the MCB to get you to a secure location. I know for a fact that Team Ceartais have a high spec bunker somewhere in the city, I also know that it has dormitories, I'll speak to Spitfire and see if I can move you there until we find a solution to this mess." Judy proposed, knowing that Olivia would most likely agree to this strategy.

"It's a start." Arthur breathed, it did seem like the safest option "Thank you Ma'am."

At that moment a knock on the conference door came causing Judy to say "Come in."

The SWAT guarded door was opened and in walked in Nala wearing an awkward expression on her face "Judy, we've got a problem at the front desk." The lioness knew she didn't have to call her long-time friend Chief or Ma'am.

"It'll have to wait, Nala. I'm not dealing with any other issues until I get these mammals to Team Ceartais." Judy stated flatly.

"No you don't understand," Nala added, looking at Jason who chewing his donut but staring right at her "some bystander tweeted a photo of these mammals being put in a van at city hall, it's spread like wildfire and now Jason's parents are screaming and shouting at the front desk."

"W-What!?" Jason nearly choked.

Judy got out of her seat and walked over to the blinds and peeked through into the foyer on the lower level to see two adult Caracals yelling at one of her officers on the front desk "Oh sweet cheese and crackers." Judy grumbled.

"No! They can't be here! If the robots come, they might get hurt." Jason panicked, the eight-year old's breathing was becoming more rapid.

"Crap." Arthur hissed, worried that Jason might get too scared and activate his power instinctively. The former cop raced over, knelt down in front of the boy and put his paws on his shoulders and spoke in the calmest voice he could manage "Jason listen to me, nothing is going to happen to your parents, they'll be fine. Chief Wilde is going to talk to them."

"But the robots, they killed Earl! They'll kill my Mom and Dad too!" Jason bawled, hyperventilating and crying at the same time.

"No, they won't, the chief is going to send your parents home." Arthur attempted to soothe, but his gut told him things were about to go to hell.

"I need to protect…I need…ARRGH!" Jason let out a loud feline cry as he pushed Arthur away, in a heartbeat his golden-brown fur washed into a silver shade with every hair becoming stiff and sharp as metal razors, his claws were now like daggers and his sharp teeth now had a shiny metal coat.

While Judy, Clawhauser and Nala looked on in astonishment at the transformation Arthur and the rest of his group felt a jolt of fear course through them. Jason had fully activated his power, the mysterious robots would be coming within minutes, out of desperation Arthur quickly hatched a plan "Chief we need to get to the armoury, now!"

000

Bullet and Scarlet had been on guard duty for over two hours, but they still hadn't approached Clara about the 'Mirror Monsters', this was due to Scarlet's nerves surrounding the subject. "Just go over and talk to her, you know she's friendly." Bullet urged, while cleaning her rock salt shotgun on a small work table.

"Look I'm just a tad anxious about admitting I'm having hallucinations, telling you and Lu is one thing but I barely know the professor." Scarlet shirked off, sitting on the edge of the table

"Well I know her really well and I know she'll be interested, she'll want to get to the bottom of this just as much as we do." Bullet persuaded while concentrating on the maintenance of the shotgun.

"I just don't want mammals to think I'm crazy." Scarlet dodged.

"Oh yeah, mammals who dress up in costumes and fight dangerous criminals for kicks are totally sound of mind." A sarcastic voice sniggered from above.

Scarlet gasped a little and looked above in surprise to find Zoe hanging upside down from a ceiling beam while messing around on her tablet "H-How much did you hear?" Scarlet asked the bat with a slight stutter.

"Hmm? Oh, I was tuned out for most of it, I just heard you call yourself crazy." Zoe answered honestly, wondering why Scarlet looked so jumpy.

"Ok, enough stalling." Bullet huffed, getting up from her chair and taking her wife by the hand and marching over to Clara "Professor."

"Oh girls, you're not going to believe what I just discovered." Clara said, sounding elated "I just got the test results from the probe I sent in yesterday, my theory about time displacement was correct; the probe traced that just over 228 hours passed on the other side of the cloud in just a day on this side, that means nine and a half days pass over there for every day that passes over here."

"Oh, uh, that's great, I guess?" Scarlet said, unsure of how to react to Clara's excitement.

"Professor, we need to talk to you about something." Bullet cut in, sounding serious.

"I know what you're going to say." Clara sighed before smiling.

"You do?" Scarlet gawped.

"I know that Kodi's your friend and that you care about him deeply, so I'm guessing you're here to warn me about breaking his heart but don't worry I really like Kodi and I don't plan on hurting him." Clara added, figuring Kodi's oldest friends would be protective of him.

"I'm sorry, what? What's this about Kodi?" Bullet asked back, confused by Clara's response.

Before Clara could clarify Scarlet squeaked "Oh my god, you were Kodi's date!"

"Correction; I'm Kodi's girlfriend." Clara declared, glad to see Scarlet's navy eyes were full of joy.

"What?" Bullet reacted, grinning "You and Kodi? As in the guy whose ego you destroyed less than a week ago?"

"Yeah, well. I got to know him and he's actually really sweet." Clara smiled.

"Our little Kodi's finally got a real girlfriend." Robyn cooed before adding "But you're right; if you hurt him, we'll destroy you."

"Noted." Clara chuckled then asked, "But if you didn't want to talk about Kodi, what did you want me to talk about?"

"Well…" Scarlet sounded.

It didn't take long for Scarlet to explain about what she had been experiencing since being struck by the purple cloud, Bullet also threw in her theory about Scarlet having a power. Clara had been enthralled throughout, with Zoe and Kiara eavesdropping also. When the story was finished Clara spoke with a huge smile on her face "This is brilliant!"

"You believe me?" Scarlet asked, sounding cautious.

"Of course, I do and Bullet's right, this most certainly is a power, this adds so much to my theories about what's on the other side of the cloud." Clara answered at high speed, her voice tainted with excitement.

"So, you have a theory on Scarlet's power?" Bullet asked, glad that Clara's gifted mind was already trying to solve this mystery.

"Ok so stay with me on this; we know that there is a physical plain on the other side of that cloud, my tests prove that has the exact same atmosphere as ours, enough to support life. So, what if Scarlet is seeing unique lifeforms that are on the other side?" Clara hypothesised.

"So, you think the monsters are from the dimension on the other side of that?" Scarlet asked, pointing to the massive black and purple cloud.

"Exactly but you said that you kept on seeing the same one until the time you were alone with Bullet? Tell me this, what colour was its eyes and fur?" Clara asked, brimming with curiosity.

"Well the one I usually see only has ginger hair on top of it's head, like some pigs do. As for the eyes; they're blue." Scarlet answered.

"Ginger fur and blue eyes, sounds like someone very familiar." Clara grinned "Don't you get it? When you look through the mirror you're seeing the you from the other universe and the monster you saw last night is most likely Bullet's other self."

Scarlet shuddered at the thought before replying "You're telling me the monster that has been scaring the living shit out of me for the last six months is me?"

"It's like looking through some weird broken mirror." Clara worded before saying excitedly "Wait we need to test out your power so we can learn more about the lifeforms on the other side."

Scarlet was relieved she wasn't going insane but now felt creeped out, the possibility of a monstrous version of her filled the hybrid with unease. Suddenly the crackle of Scarlet and Bullet's comm links tore them out of the conversation " **Chief Wilde's SOS button has been triggered, location precinct 1 in Savannah Central."** Bella informed.

"Wait, Bella what the hell are you talking about?" Scarlet panicked, putting her paw to her ear.

" **Chief Wilde has activated her SOS button, she is on the phone to Spitfire as we speak."** Bella answered, the virtual intelligence's calm voice did not reflect the situation.

"What's happening?" Zoe asked, flying over to heroines.

"Is everything all right?" Kiara queried, spotting the distress in Scarlet's eyes.

"We're not sure." Bullet answered, waiting anxiously for more information.

" **All right, Mage and Roar get your arses to Precinct 1 now, Judy tells me the robots are on their way there."** Olivia's voice came over the line, the sound of her mech powering up could also be heard.

"Spitfire tell us what the hell's going on!" Scarlet demanded.

" **Officer Knight and his friends handed themselves over to Judy, one of them got scared and used his powers, apparently these bots can track them every time they use them."** Olivia quickly explained " **My new mech is about to get an extreme field test, me, Roar and Mage are heading there now!"**

"Me and Bullet will be there as fast as we can." Scarlet replied, her worry making her heart race.

" **No, stay put. When a bot grabbed Regina, she was brought to that gym and through the anomaly. I need you two to be on guard in case they come."** Olivia told.

"But my Mom's in danger!" Scarlet yelled.

" **And we'll protect her, you need to stop any bots that slip through."** Olivia said firmly.

"But-" Scarlet protested.

" **Stay put, that's an order!"** Olivia commanded, before switching off her comm.

"This is bad." Bullet said, hugging her tail.

"Care to explain?" Zoe piped up, her, Kiara and Clara were still in the dark.

"The ZPD is about to be attacked by the robots that kicked Spitfire's ass." Scarlet seethed, thumping her foot with frustration.

"Is my Mom ok?" Kiara asked, her tone matching Scarlet's anxious one.

"We don't know." Bullet replied "Spitfire's ordered us to stand guard here but…"

"Screw it, if my Mom's in danger I need to be there." Scarlet declared, not caring that she was disobeying the team leader.

"I'm going with you." Bullet said, "There's no way I'm letting you fight those things alone."

"My blind badass." Scarlet replied, before heading for the door with Bullet following closely behind.

"Whoa, hold up!" Zoe shouted after the heroines "We need you here in case the bots come!"

"You handle them, I'm going to save my Mom." Scarlet spat, not even looking back.

"Don't do this, I know you're worried, so am I. But Spitfire gave you a direct order." Kiara implored.

"Our first duty is to our family." Bullet declared defiantly before exiting the gym, leaving the half dozen Camelot troops and one physicist to defend the purple cloud.

000

By the time Arthur had locked himself and the other powered mammals in the armoury cage, the sound of distant gunfire and smashing glass could be heard. Judy and Clawhauser raced to mobilize the SWAT team as well as evacuate any civilians in the precinct while Nala hastily escorted Arthur and his group to the armoury. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Jason sobbed, the caracal had returned to his normal form and was being cradled by Brenda.

"Hush now, it's going to be ok." Brenda tried to calm, but the echoes of gunshots and shouts were making the donkey nervous to.

Arthur was busy loading assault rifles and posting them through the slot to Nala on the outside of the cage, the seasoned lioness asked in a steely tone "Any tips for fighting these things, Knight?"

"Aim for their eyes, their bodies are bulletproof but if we can blind them we might stand a chance." Arthur answered, loading an assault rifle built for a small mammal like Judy before passing it to Nala through the slot in the gun cage.

"Can you use your powers on them?" Nala asked further, setting the guns meant for Clawhauser and Judy down at her feet.

"It'll stall them but won't stop them, maybe I can hold one of them still long enough for you to shoot their eyes out." Arthur suggested, the increasing sound of gunfire made his worry for his friends grow more and more with each second.

Nala was about to ask about the other mammals' powers when the electronically locked door to the armoury opened and the breathless forms of Clawhauser and Judy burst in.

Both cops looked roughed up, with their uniforms slightly ripped and small cuts dotted over them, both of them dropping the empty machine guns they had just used in a firefight. Clawhauser slammed the heavy metal door shut, locked it and wheezed "I haven't run that fast in years."

"Sit rep?" Nala queried, wanting to know what they were up against.

"There are four of them, they smashed through the glass roof in the atrium and started blasting cops with some sort of energy weapon, no one's dead it just seems to knock them out. We've got SWAT guarding the hallway outside, but I don't know how long they'll last." Judy informed at speed, walking over to Nala and picking up a freshly loaded rifle, the rabbit had changed out of her police chief uniform and wore only a tactical bulletproof vest over her bra for ease of movement,

A loud explosion outside the armoury made everyone jump, Clawhauser rushed over and picked up a new machine gun while panting "Sounds like SWAT started using the grenades."

"Ok guys, we just need to hold them off until Ceartais arrives. We can do this." Judy rallied, flicking off her safety and aiming her gun at the door waiting for it to burst open.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry about all this." Arthur spoke, the sense of guilt was overwhelming the wolf.

"Don't you dare be sorry Knight, everything you've done is down the fundamental ideal of being a cop; protect and serve. And you've done that, I'm proud to call you one of my officers, I'm proud of all of you." Judy had to shout over the increasing sound of explosions and gunfire coming closer and closer.

"Don't get mushy on us now, Bun Bun." Clawhauser laughed nervously, levelling his gun at the door. The screams and shouts of SWAT officers could be heard now, filling everyone in the room with dread.

There were a few seconds of silence after the last gunshot, everyone in the armoury held their breath waiting for the enemy to begin their assault. The door was ripped off its hinges revealing the four hulking automatons, who weren't looking at the trio aiming guns at them but the powered mammals in the gun cage. "Light them up!" Judy hollered, all three officers started firing at the bots, the bullets pinged off their armour and only scuffed and cracked the lenses around their eyes, it didn't take long for them to empty every round in their magazines, in the brief break as they picked up the spare loaded rifles one of the bots started marching toward the cage. Clawhauser darted forward and attempted to gun butt the robot but the machine saw the move coming and grabbed Clawhauser by the throat and began to squeeze.

"Clawhauser!" Arthur screamed, outstretching both his paws and using his powers to make the bot drop the cheetah before slamming the bot into the wall with great force.

Before Judy and Nala could fire another shot the three other enemy bots aimed their arm cannons at the veteran cops and the downed Clawhauser then blasted them with a blast of green light, knocking all three of them out. Jason had seen all this, and his fur had turned to razors again with fear "No, no, no." He cried.

Arthur knew the battle was lost but he wasn't going to let the feline boy out of his sight, he was still under his protection. He spotted a pair of handcuffs among all the police equipment and by instinct grabbed them and handcuffed himself to Jason "I need you to brave, little guy." Arthur said, tightening the cuffs. In the corner of Arthur's eye, he saw the bots approach and aim their arms cannons at the occupants of the gun cage "It's going to be ok." Arthur lied, then came a flash of green light and his world went dark.

000

"I can't believe Scarlet, I thought she'd grown up out of her impulsive crap." Zoe groused, still steamed about Scarlet and Hannah's abrupt exit. The heroines had left ten minutes ago, and they had received no word from anyone in Team Ceartais, Camelot had taken up defensive positions while Clara was advised to tidy away her scientific equipment as fast as possible.

"She's worried about her mom, cut her some slack." Kiara replied, who was busy texting her own mother for any sort of update.

Clara read the worry in the lioness' face and kindly spoke "If you're Mom is as tough as you, I'm sure she'll be fine."

"Thanks professor, but you really should get out of here as quick as you can." Kiara said, putting her phone back in her pocket.

"This stuff is pretty complex, it's not like I can just stuff it in a box and skedaddle." Clara replied, taking apart one of her probes.

"Wait." Zoe whispered, the bat focused her hearing to make out a distant sound, it sounded like jet engines "That sounds like jets, I think we're going to have company."

"All right, look alive." Kiara hollered to her troops "Only fire if you have a clear shot, these things are fast and we don't want stray bullets resulting in a friendly fire death, we clear?"

"Yes Ma'am." The squad chorused.

"Zoe, radio Ray at the base and tell him to head over here with back up." Kiara instructed, knowing that they'd need his help.

"I'm on it-" Zoe began to answer but was cut off when the boarded-up skylight smashed and splintered open and the four bots flew in. Two were holding two unconscious mammals each while another one had hold of a donkey, the final bot had their arm cannon at the ready, a huge slab of wood landed in front of Clara and caused her to stumble back.

The physicist felt a jolt in her arm as she fell down, she looked at her arm and saw she was touching the black and purple cloud without the protection of a hazmat suit. The dazed Clara snatched her arm back, but it was still tingling, the bot holding no mammals looked at Clara and stated " **New subject identified, designation Z18, capture for study."**

"Hold your fire, they've got hostages!" Kiara shouted to her squad, not wanting a bullet to hit one of the unconscious mammals.

Before Kiara could form a rescue strategy three of the bots zoomed into the darkness of the cloud while the fourth made its way towards the stunned and dizzy Clara, who was still on the floor.

Zoe saw that the bot heading for Clara and swooped towards it, she landed on it's back and tried to plant an electrical overload device on it, but she was too slow, she was grabbed by the bot and quickly flung into the black mass of the cloud.

"ZOE!" Kiara screamed, struggling against the urge to fire in case she hit Clara. The young professor was then scooped up by the automaton before it speeded into the black and purple cloud. The entire thing happened in less than ten seconds but in that short amount of time Kiara had lost her squad mate and friend, she had lost the one mammal who could've solved the mystery of anomaly and she lost five civilians. The ZPD, Camelot and Team Ceartais had all failed.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Clare and Zoe have been taken! Arthur's power pack to! Where were they taken? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! Next time on TBM; Robyn and Hannah face the consequences of their actions, a distraught Aleks is out for blood and Olivia gives her team a tough choice. Please Review and c ya soon)


	9. Through the looking glass

(AN/ Hey Folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. I'd like to a thank you all for all the lovely messages of support following some trolling both on fanfiction . net and tumblr, thanks as always for all the likes, faves, follows, reblogs and reviews for the last update. I really enjoyed writing the final moment of this chapter, so without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 8 – Through the looking glass**

Scarlet and Bullet had just made it across the Savannah Central border when they heard the sound of multiple jet engines above them. The two heroines were on the rooftop of a department store and looked up expecting to see Spitfire streaking across the mid morning sky but their hearts sank when they saw four strange looking automatons instead, with unconscious prisoners in their arms. The married couple quickly turned on their heel when they realised the grave mistake they made, the two got back to the run down gym in Rainforest District as fast as they could but it was already too late. The powered mammals had been taken, Zoe and Clara were snatched as well and Scarlet knew that the blame rested with her. Within half an hour the rest of Ceartais had arrived, as well as Ray and a back up Camelot squad and the last to arrive was Aleks and when he was told what has happened to his wife his eyes flared with a rage unseen by his friends.

"Zoe…my Zoe…my love, is gone." Aleks stated, each word simmering with rage.

Scarlet stepped towards the distraught silver fox and grovelled "Aleks I'm so sorry, I never meant for th-"

THWACK!

Aleks' right fist slammed into Scarlet's muzzle, the sound and force of the punch was accompanied the crack of her nose being broke, the ginger hybrid staggered back and fell to the ground. "Robyn!" Bullet crowed, crouching down to her wife's aid.

"Zoe could be dead and you're sorry? And the fault is on you two." Aleks growled.

Luna went over to Scarlet and with the help of Bullet, got her on her feet "You ok, Robbie?" Luna asked.

"Y-yeah, I had that coming." Scarlet winced, putting her paw to her nose and painfully fixing it back into place as the nanomachines in her body repaired the cartilage.

The sniff of crying grabbed everyone's attention again, it was Aleks, the fox had morphed from wrath to woe in the blink of an eye "What if she's dead? What am I going to tell the twins?" he wept.

Alice stepped over to the grief stricken mammal and took a hold of his paw "Aleks, we swear we'll bring Zoe home, we're not going to leave her, Clara or the missing 17 on the other side of that cloud." She declared, causing a speedy exchange of fretful looks around the room.

Olivia, who was out of her mech, was perched on Kiara's shoulder could see the confused looks on some of the mammals faces "If it wasn't clear, we're leading a rescue mission onto the other side of the anomaly. I'm definitely going but everyone else on the team gets a choice except Scarlet and Bullet, you two need to clean up the clusterfuck you just caused."

"Olivia we never-" Bullet began to justify.

"Shut up and listen. You two really shit the bed on this one, I gave you a direct order and you both ignored it, you knew that there was a high risk of the bots coming here but you left this place undefended anyway. Now the powered mammals have been kidnapped, one of the most skilled Camelot operatives is gone and the one scientist who could've helped us contain this thing has been taken too!" Olivia ranted loudly, causing Kiara to wince a little "If I didn't need you two on this mission I'd be putting you on team suspension, now I don't care that you're about adopt a wee boy, right now you two need to fix your mistake and get those mammals home. Understand?"

"We understand." Scarlet answered solemnly, humbled by the tiny mammal. Bullet nodded in agreement, Olivia's words were true but cut deep.

"Right then." Olivia sighed, getting out her smartphone "Now from Clara's email this morning, I know that she discovered that there is a safe atmosphere on the other side of that cloud but also that nine and a half days pass over there for every day over here."

"So every second we waist could mean hours and days for them." Ray grunted, the seasoned airman's thoughts were on his subordinate Zoe, whom he selected himself for his squad.

"Exactly, but I'm going to need at least twelve hours to get some kit together to go over to the other side stuff like food, shelter and medical equipment. I say we commence the operation at 6am tomorrow." Olivia quickly formed a plan, already texting her PA, Pua, to clear her schedule.

"I'm coming with you." Aleks said, wiping away his tears.

"Not a good idea, one; you need to be here for your kids, both parents can't be lost in another dimension. And two; I'm pretty sure if we stir up trouble over there those bots might counterattack here, we'll need some allies on this side to take them out." Olivia reasoned.

"…Fine." Aleks let out a small snarl of frustration but Olivia's logic was sound.

"We can put extra operatives and auto turrets here if it'll help." Kiara suggested, hating the fact that she was unable to fire a single shot during the entire incident.

"Greatly appreciated." Olivia replied before looking at the rest of her team "I'm going to need answers now if you're coming, Roar?"

"Of course." Roar chimed, knowing that Jasiri would understand.

"Luna?" Olivia asked.

"I'm game but Alice might be indisposed." Luna branched, looking anxiously at the white rabbit.

"Shit, I forgot you two were at the fertility clinic today." Olivia huffed, Alice was the best tracker on the team but with her possibly having buns in the oven there was no way she'd be coming on such a dangerous mission.

Alice looked sheepish as she added "I am sorry, but if I am with a litter I won't be joining you. However I'll do a pregnancy test tonight, if it's negative I'll be part of the rescue party."

"Bullet and Scarlet are already coming." Olivia skipped, shooting a dirty look at the two before looking over at the Mage, who was still in costume "Mage, you coming?"

There was no reply, the wolf just stared at the anomaly with focused eyes, he looked like he was lost in thought.

"Mage?" Olivia spoke up again, observing the Mage's face and feeling worried for the canine.

"I'll be going." Mage said, he voice devoid of his usual enthusiasm.

"Are you ok, dude?" Roar queried, also noticing the wolf's out of character behaviour.

"Oh my god," Bullet gasped, finally realising why Mage was acting odd "Clara…Mage, we didn't…we're sorry."

"Um, what's going on?" Luna asked, clueless to Bullet's reaction and Mage's behaviour.

"Him and Clara just started dating." Scarlet answered, the guilt felt like a dagger being twisted into her gut.

"What?" Olivia half laughed, not quite believing the answer.

"She told us this morning." Bullet confirmed, her head bowed in shame.

"Wait, she was your date?" Olivia realised, her face growing sad "Oh Kodi, I'm so sorry."

The Mage didn't respond to anyone's sympathies instead he closed his eyes and spoke "They're all ok, they were taken for a reason, which means they're alive, Zoe's one of the toughest soldiers around and Clara is stronger than she looks…we're going to get them back."

"Of course we are, buddy." Roar replied, putting a paw of solidarity on his friend's shoulder.

"Ok, I suggest everyone head home and takes care of whatever they need to, I'll update the ZPD and Mayor's office on the situation. Get some shut eye tonight because come 6am tomorrow we're walking into that." Olivia instructed, her stomach was churning with nerves but she didn't let it show.

When everyone began to disperse, Alice and Luna rushed after the distraught Aleks wanting to drive him home, Roar transformed back into his usual form and headed back to his home to talk to Jasiri but The Mage just stayed and looked at the purple cloud for a while but Scarlet and Bullet were reluctant to leave their best friend alone. Mage's brown eyes were still locked on the cloud when he spoke up "Are you two going to talk to me or are you just going to sit there wearing guilty expressions?"

"Dude…we're sorry, I never thought something like this would happen." Scarlet babbled.

"I know." Mage responded, his shoulders slumping.

"You must hate us as much as Aleks." Bullet lamented, feeling close to tears.

"I could never hate you two," Mage said in an instant, finally looking at the two "no matter what."

"This never would've happened if I had just listened to Spitfire…" Scarlet started to berate herself.

"If it was my Mom in danger I would've done the exact same thing, I don't blame either of you for what happened." Mage eased "You made a bad call, but you want to fix it…I know we can do it."

Scarlet had no words, just to hear that her best friend didn't hate her was an immense relief, she pulled The Mage into a hug and made a silent vow to right her wrongs against her friends.

000

Robyn and Hannah didn't head home after they left the dilapidated gym, the heroines went back to the bunker and got changed into their civilian clothes before heading straight to the Brother Bear Children's home. Even though the couple were not officially going to be Aaron's parents until Christmas week they didn't want to leave on a mission without telling the little marsupial, both Robyn and Hannah were pained that they had to leave but they knew they had to repair the damage they had done. The two arrived at the home just after Aaron got home from school, they spoke to the head social worker Kenai and asked if it was ok to take him out for ice cream, the friendly grizzly agreed but asked to have him home before dinnertime.

The new family were sat in a small park near the Children's Home and were all feasting on ice cream cones they had just bought from the vendor near the play area. Robyn had chose double chocolate, Hannah picked banoffee and Aaron was licking away at his mint choc chip cone while telling his potential mothers about his day at school "…Then Sammy scoreda goal in the last second, so we won!" He told with excitement.

"You really love soccer, don't you?" Hannah smiled.

"The kid's sports mad, just like me." Robyn grinned "But it's better if he sticks to team games then take up MMA."

"So are you two going to tell me why you're sad?" Aaron asked out of the blue, still licking his ice cream.

"H-Huh?" Hannah choked, nearly dropping her cone.

"Did you use your powers to find that out?" Robyn asked, sounding suspicious.

"I didn't need to, I can tell. Besides it's rude to look into mammal's memories without permission." Aaron answered, sounding mature "So what's wrong, Mom?"

Robyn bowed her head slightly and sighed "Me and your Mom made a big mistake today and now our friends are in trouble because of it."

"What did you do?" Aaron asked, not sounding judgemental but curious.

"It's to do with our superhero work," Hannah whispered so passing Mammals wouldn't hear "Spitfire gave us an order to stay and guard something but when we heard your Grandma Judy might be in trouble we left our friends alone and now two of them have been kidnapped."

"And it's all our fault." Robyn lamented.

"But you're sorry, right?" Aaron asked, feeling empathy for his moms.

"Of course we are, but that doesn't fix the problem, we need to make it right." Hannah spoke, her mind drifting to thoughts of Zoe and Clara.

"We're going a rescue mission for a couple of days so you won't hear from us, we need to bring our friends home." Robyn broke the news, expecting there to a look of sadness on the boy's face but it never came.

"It's ok, I know you two can do it." Aaron chirped.

"You're not mad at us for going away?" Hannah asked, sounding fretful.

"Nope, you two are superheroes and you're going to save your friends, why would I be mad?" Aaron asked back in a bright tone.

Robyn had finished off her cone and promptly cuddled the cute fuzzball "You're a good boy, Aaron." She cooed before peppering his cheek with kisses.

"Mom, stop." Aaron giggled.

"Double kiss attack!" Hannah sang, kissing his other cheek causing the little hero to chuckle even more. Despite the heroines feeling down about their failure the two allowed themselves to enjoy the happiness of the moment but for Robyn this was something more. This feeling gave her the courage and determination to go into the unknown and rescue the kidnapped mammals, because every single one of them deserved to feel the joy she was experiencing right now.

000

It was just after 8pm and both Alice and Luna were planning on getting a early night so they had enough energy for the mission tomorrow morning but before they went to bed there was one thing that needed to be done; a pregnancy test. Alice had just taken the test and now the couple were sat on the bathroom tiles waiting for two minutes to pass to find out the result. "Ugh I hate waiting." Luna moaned, looking at her watch.

"Luna it's only been a minute." Alice calmed, the bunny looked tranquil compared to her tetchy wife.

"Yeah well patience was never a virtue of mine." Luna admitted "So are you ready to be pregnant?"

"It's a little late to be asking that, but yes I'm ready." Alice answered before asking "Are you ready to put up with my mood swings, running out to buy food for me and sharing a bed with a fat bunny?"

"Absolutely," Luna smiled, putting a paw on Alice's toned stomach "besides I think you'll look hot with a big belly and let's not forget I will be taking care of your 'Other' needs, pregnant mammals get horny like crazy and bunnies are the extreme side of that scale."

"Lucky for me I have my beautiful and dutiful wife taking care of me." Alice grinned before stating "But remember what told us, she said that I have only a one in three shot of getting pregnant from the first attempt."

"Yeah, yeah." Luna waved off, she was feeling optimistic. She glance at her watch again and yipped "Ok that's two minutes."

Alice stood up and picked up the pregnancy test from the top of the toilet, she read the digital screen that displayed the words 'NOT PREGNANT'. Despite not being the news she wanted, the bunny didn't feel sad, she was told that this would be the most likely result and that she would have a greater chance when she had her next insemination "I'm not pregnant, looks like Dr. Gazi was right." Alice said pragmatically "We can schedule another appointment at the clinic when we get back from the mission."

Alice then looked over to Luna and realised her wife had not prepared for a negative result; the vixen's bottom lip was quivering, her amber eyes were glossy with tears and her ears were flat against her skull "Oh _mon amour_ , it's ok." Alice soothed, going over and pulling her into a hug.

"I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't be acting like this." Luna cried, taking comfort from the embrace.

"Luna it's ok to feel like this." Alice assured.

"I just wanted this so badly, it's stupid but I just want to start painting the nursery and picking names." Luna sniffled.

"You're excited to be a mother, so am I and we will be. We just have to try again when we get back, ok?" Alice eased before getting on her tip toes and kissing Luna tenderly.

"…Ok." Luna spoke, wiping away her tears.

Alice decided then to be a little mischievous and said "I may not be pregnant but we can practice taking care of my pregnant 'Urges' if you want."

Luna laughed and wiped away the last of her tears before grinning "Typical bunny." Alice then took Luna by the hand and led them to their bedroom.

000

Everyone had arrived at the Camelot guarded gym around 5.30am, all of Team Ceartais were in their uniforms making Nick, Judy, Jack, Skye and Jasiri stick out like sore thumbs. The new Spitfire model that Olivia was piloting looked more imposing than it's previous incarnations, it was still it's trademark green but it seemed less bulky but taller and it's mechanical tail seemed longer. The reason this certain mech took so long for Olivia to get right was due to it's armour, when she had fought the interdimensional bots they used a vibration based weapon that screwed up the electrics, made the pilot feel like hell and weakened the structural integrity of the mech so for this new model she made sure that every armour plate had a built in vibration sensor. The resulting being if a vibration weapon was fired at Spitfire her armour would also vibrate at a frequency that would disable the destructive power of the blast, she would be knocked off her feet but she wouldn't suffer damage.

Scarlet was anxiously looking at the doorway, as if she was expecting someone which didn't go unnoticed by Skye "If you're looking for Rojek, I've given him the day off." She stated.

"I see." Scarlet spoke, knowing that even if she got Zoe back it would be a long time before the silver fox forgave her.

"Enough moping, it's time to fix this mess." Spitfire groused at Scarlet, wanting the hybrid to focus instead of dwelling on her failure.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Nick asked, his worry for his daughters' wellbeing clear to hear.

"It's the only way Dad, we need to bring those mammals home." Andraste enforced, checking her quiver before they left.

"But if you go through that won't you get powers?" Jack fretted, looking at the black and purple cloud.

"We're going to use the forcefield barrier I use against bullets, I've got Bella to modify it so it can fit us all under it." Mage explained, sounding like his usual self again.

"If my math is right, and it always is; Mage's shield is dense enough to stop that crap from touching us." Spitfire added, checking the cases full of camping equipment and food on the wheeled pallet.

To the left of the room, Kion and Jasiri were wrapped in one another's arms and their lips were locked, the timid lion was usually self conscious about public displays of affection but he wanted to hold onto his girlfriend a little longer. He pulled back from the kiss and sighed "I really think I should've told Mufasa about this."

"And I'm telling you that you don't need to, if you told him last night he would've run to his room, packed a bag and demand he come with you. I'm just going to tell him that you're on a training trip with the team and doing boring grown up stuff." Jasiri said, hiding her concern for her long term boyfriend's safety.

"I'm going to miss you so much." Kion confessed, holding Jasiri a little tighter.

"And I'm going to miss you too, Kitten. Now transform and go join your friends." Jasiri encouraged.

Kion stepped back and willed his body to transform into its herculean Roar mode, he then said with a much deeper voice "I love you, Jasiri."

"I love you too, kitten." Jasiri smiled, beckoning the now giant lion to crouch down, once he did she planted a final kiss on his monstrous muzzle.

Bullet had overheard all of Kion and Jasiri's sweet words but it didn't cheer her up, she was still thinking about the mission and why they were doing it in the first place. Skye noticed her daughter's discomfort and took a grip of her paw "I know this seems bad, I know you're blaming yourself but you're not going to be any good on this mission if you keep on feeling guilty. Suck it up, sweetie, you've got this." Skye rallied.

"Thanks Mom." Bullet smiled, hugging her mother and was quickly joined by the worrisome Jack.

"When you get back we can plan Aaron's first Christmas, us and the Wildes are going to have the best Christmas ever." Jack said, fighting back his tears.

"It'll be magical, Dad." Bullet replied.

Nick had gone over and gave a tight hug to Scarlet, Andraste and Yurei "For christ's sake, please be safe over there, if anything happened to you I'd…"

"Dad, take it easy. We're superheroes, we can handle this. Plus I need to get this one home safe for our next clinic appointment." Andraste eased her father's worries, kissing him on the cheek.

"Remember what the fortune teller told you? You'll have six grandchildren, you already have Aaron but I need to come back to have the others, the fates have willed it." Yurei comforted her father-in-law, despite not taking much notice of such hokum.

Judy then hugged and kissed the three before pleading "I know you'll look for each other over there so I know I don't need to say it but if you can do one thing for me that'd be great."

"What is it?" Scarlet asked, looking at her Mom touch her police badge for comfort.

"When you find Officer Knight, tell him I'm sorry, I failed to protect him and his friends and they're gone because of me." Judy unloaded.

This hit Scarlet like diving into an ice pool, she had never considered that her mother would feel guilt over what happened. Judy felt like she failed Arthur just like Scarlet felt like she failed Zoe and Clara, the red furred hybrid resisted saying a 'Like mother, like daughter' line and just promised "I will, don't you worry."

"Sorry to be a bitch but we've got to get moving." Spitfire announced.

Ray and Kiara who had been silent throughout the goodbyes stepped forward, the lioness was the first to speak "Before you go, I need to give you some information about Zoe. That little bat is smart and if she has been captured, she's already working on her escape, she's going to try and get a signal out if she can. It could be Morse code, audio or whatever but it will say the codeword 'Hummingbird' that's the code that means she's alive."

"Hummingbird, got it." Mage responded, committing the word to memory.

"The higher ups will only let Team Ceartais work alone for two days over here before me and a Camelot squad have to go in after you, that means you'll have 19 days over there to find the kidnapped mammals and bring them home before we go in all guns blazing, understand?" Ray informed, his displeasure at being left behind was clear.

"So we best save the day before you wankers screw it up." Spitfire half jested, glad to see Ray bare his teeth a little at the remark.

"Easy, Spitfire." Roar cautioned, not wanting to piss off his brother in law.

"All right then, let's be off. Mage, would you kindly?" Spitfire asked, taking old of the handle for the pallet of supplies.

Mage nodded before saying in a loud voice " _Praesdium!"_ the gold transparent force field surrounded Team Ceartais and their supplies "We're all set."

Scarlet took one last look at her parents "We'll back in two days." She promised, hoping that she wouldn't break it.

"Go kick ass sweetheart!" Nick shouted as everyone waved the heroes off as they took slow and cautious steps into the black and purple cloud, Roar looked back after five seconds and could only see darkness he was about to ask about which way is correct when all of sudden an unexpected light came into startling focus, causing everyone to cover their eyes.

Mage blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted and realised what the light was; it was the sun, hanging high in the blue sky. He looked behind him and saw that they had emerged from the black and purple cloud, which was just floating there as it did in the other dimension. The wolf then took a quick look around and was surprised by what he saw, he had expected some alien landscape or to be in a technologically advanced city from a sci fi movie but instead it looked like they had arrived in an empty parking lot. "What the? A parking lot? Really?" Mage scoffed.

"Kinda' disappointing." Scarlet concurred, looking around and noticing a small patch of woodland on the other side of the parking lot.

"This is fantastic!" Spitfire exclaimed.

"How is this fantastic?" Mage asked with a drone.

"Car parks means cars which means mammals, which means technology, which means we access their satellites to help us find the kidnapped mammals faster." Spitfire hastily answered before asking "Bella, can you hack their satellites?"

" **Of course, Spitfire. I'll get right on it."** Bella's voice rang in everyone's comm.

"Wait we can contact Zootopia from here?" Roar queried.

"No, I took Bella with us, I installed her on all your phones and my mech, since none of us are hackers it's useful to have her around plus she can play us tunes during the rescue mission." Spitfire answered.

Bullet's body was swaying a little causing Robyn to ask "Babe, you ok?"

"Y-yeah, just so many new smells and sounds…it's overpowering. I think I feel high right now." Bullet chuckled.

"Yeesh, and years of breathing in my joint smoke did nothing to her." Andraste chuckled.

"I don't like this, we're too exposed." Yurei spoke up, her hand on the hilt of her katana as if expecting an attack.

"That's just the warrior in you talking." Scarlet waved off.

"No, I can feel eyes on us, we should investigate." Yurei corrected, using her high tech contact lenses to scan for heat signatures in the shut down supermarket that the parking lot was joined to.

"Yurei's right, I can sense mammals around us, but they smell weird, like really weird I can't make out what species they are." Bullet supported, sounding tipsy on the overload of new smells.

" **Spitfire, there are two separate computer programs attempting to stop my hack, their source points are less than 500 metres away."** Bella informed.

"See, I told you." Yurei spoke, as she continued to scan the building "My bet is that there is company waiting for us in the supermarket."

"Now let's not get ahead of ourselves maybe they're friendly, we should go about this in a diplomatic fash-" Roar began to be the voice of reason but was interrupted mid sentence when a huge blur of green and white tackled him and sent him crashing twelve feet away.

Scarlet got a look at Roar's attacker and felt immediately uneasy, the figure was at least nine feet tall with green skin and darker green hair, garbed in a white and purple bodysuit but his face is what made her feel weak at the knees. It had the same facial structure and weird shape nose that her mirror monsters had. She was about to leap to Roar's aid when she heard a female voice yell "Champions attack!"

The voice had come from the treeline, everyone bar Roar turned to see five more attackers heading towards them, all of them similar to Scarlet's 'Mirror Monsters'. At the head of the pack was a girl with brown skin and long black hair, her brown eyes were framed by a blue domino mask and she was donned in what Scarlet thought was a blue and red burkini with a gold lighting bolt across the torso, a red scarf hung around her neck and fluttered in the wind as she ran at the team with her own squad behind her. "So much for diplomacy." Scarlet snarled, running towards the apparent leader, ready to fight.

Roar was already trading blows with the green skinned attacker while everyone else ran at the mystery enemies, each team member taking on a different one but all Scarlet was interested in was the one with a lighting bolt on her chest. But as she closed the distance, the leader outstretched her fist but it became unnaturally long and her fist became the size of a boulder. "Crap!" Scarlet reacted, jumping out of the way at the last second "What the hell are you!?"

The attacked drew back her fist which returned to it's original size and sassed "My name's Ms. Marvel and I'm here to take out the trash."

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Team Ceartais have landed in the Marvel Universe!? Where are the Kidnapped Mammals!? Why are The Champions attacking!? What did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review! Next time on TBM; It's Ceartais vs The Champions, who will win? Andraste finds it's difficult to fight her opponent and Clara wakes up in a strange place. Please review and C YA SOON!)


	10. The Champions

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox with a day early update as a apology for the late update last week, thank you all for you patience and your continuing support. And to my dear friends of the Dev team thank you for sticking with me and helping me through this difficult time atm. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 9 – The Champions**

Roar was already trading blows with the green skinned attacker while everyone else ran at the mystery enemies, each team member taking on a different one but all Scarlet was interested in was the one with a lighting bolt on her chest. But as she closed the distance, the leader outstretched her fist but it became unnaturally long and her fist became the size of a boulder. "Crap!" Scarlet reacted, jumping out of the way at the last second "What the hell are you!?"

The attacker drew back her fist which returned to it's original size "My name's Ms. Marvel and I'm here to take out the trash!" the polymorph yelled with confidence.

"Trash? Oh, now you're asking for it!" Scarlet snarled before charging again at her raven haired foe, as Scarlet got within ten yards of Ms. Marvel she once again stretched out an arm with a massive fist balled up for a punch. Scarlet saw the move coming and leapt onto her opponent's outstretched arm and ran up it swiftly before slamming both her large rabbit like feet in Ms. Marvel's face. As soon as Scarlet's feet connected, she used the momentum to jump up in the air leaving Ms. Marvel stunned and dazed, while falling back down Scarlet retrieved her telescopic nightstick from her belt and extended it and when she got close enough she slammed it hard into Marvel's left shoulder.

"Ahhhhh!" Ms. Marvel hollered, as Scarlet landed and rolled away ready for the counterattack.

After a few seconds Ms. Marvel still hadn't attacked, she was just groaning in pain and holding a hand to her shoulder "Oh relax, I didn't break it. Besides you started this fight, not tough enough to finish it?" Scarlet smirked.

"I'm tougher than I look." Ms. Marvel panted, then her body began to grow soon enough she was thirty foot tall and a confident expression had returned to her face.

"Holy crap." Scarlet muttered, caught off guard by the sudden growth of her enemy, she figured that if she ran towards her friends then Ms. Marvel wouldn't step over in case she hurt her teammates.

Scarlet began to bolt towards Mage who was battling a green haired girl but was scooped up by two giant hand that clasped around her like ball "And you can stay in there until you calm down." Ms. Marvel grinned.

Scarlet let out a growl of frustration before a sneaky idea popped into her head, she pulled down her mask and bared her fangs "Let's see how long she can hold onto me."

Not far away Mage was trying to keep all his focus on the green haired girl he was fighting instead of whom his friends were battling, the Mage had just thrown a brace of sleeper cards at the green haired girl which she had easily glided out of the wave of when he asked "Hey, I don't mean to be rude but are you even a mammal?" He asked this due to his combatant's appearance; she was dressed in rather normal attire with denim skinny jeans and a green t shirt with three yellow diamonds in the centre but her physical body looked like something pulled out of a sci fi movie. The girl's seemed to lack any skin instead there was interlocking pink plates of metal where her skin should be, her hair was as green as leaves and her eyes were pupil-less and glowed a bright yellow just like the gem fixed onto her forehead.

"An odd question," The metal girl replied with ease as she threw a flurry of punches at Mage that the wolf tried to dodge "I'm a synthezoid, a non organic lifeform."

"You mean like a robot? Are all your team robots?" Mage enquired, circling his foe waiting for her to attack again.

"No, and don't call me a robot." The metal girl answered, sounding irked "If you have to label me then call me Viv."

"Ok, my bad. Here's a present to say I'm sorry." Mage grinned, swiftly throwing a few more sleeper cards only for all of them to faze through her body like she was made of thin air, he masked his surprise by smarming "Nice trick."

"You like tricks? Here's another one." Viv spoke before vanishing completely.

Mage expected Viv to charge at him while invisible but before she could land a hit he shouted " _Evanescet!"_ The Mage's light bending and thermal dampening tech then made his disappear, he then quickly switched his custom domino mask to look for look for any electrical signals figuring that Viv's body was all electric seeing as she was artificial. Even though Viv was invisible to the naked eye her silhouette shone a bright green in the lenses of Mage's mask, the wolf then flicked out his tech manipulating wand from the sleave of his jacket and aimed it at Viv.

Viv stopped in her tracks and became visible against her will "What!?" she gasped.

Then the Mage waved the wand at Viv and she proceeded to punch herself in the face over and over while he was childishly chanting "Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself."

Across the other side of the parking lot Roar had managed to get his opponent into a head lock and kept him down on the ground "Listen, I don't know what you are, but we tried to be civil about this." Roar said gently.

"Get off me you damn cat!" The green skinned man snapped, punching the ribs of Roar but to no effect.

"You're stronger than a bull elephant, but that's not strong enough." Roar said, wondering how long he'd have to keep this weird looking creature restrained.

"Back before I was Brawn I would've owned your sorry ass!" Brawn snarled, trying his best to break free of the head lock to no avail.

"Brawn? Oh I get it, it's because you have muscles. Wait, so what were you before?" Roar asked, contemplating knocking out the aggressive green skinned man and helping out his friends.

"I was one of the Hulks!" Brawn shouted, expecting some sort of reaction out of the giant white lion.

"What in the world is a Hulk?" Roar asked, oblivious to the weight that title carried.

Fifteen feet away Bullet crashed to the tarmac of the parking lot with both her legs and paws bound by thick silver webbing, that was fired from the wrists of a figure in a black body suit and mask with a red spider web design over the top and a huge red spider symbol in the middle "You're fast for a fox, usually doesn't take that long for me to tie someone up." The masked man commented, sounding more intrigued than put out.

"Excuse you, I'm a h-hybrid thank you very much." Bullet corrected, still sounding hazy from the new smell overload.

"Are you drunk, Ma'am?" The masked man asked politely, hiding his need to chuckle at the canine gunslinger.

"No, it's j-just my senses are out of sync, I mean you smell s-super weird…what the heck are you anyway?" Bullet asked back, conscious of the fact that she was slurring her speech.

"You don't know who I am? I'm Spiderman…well one of them." Spiderman answered, assuming that that Bullet was from this earth "I mean my outfit is iconic."

"I'm blind." Bullet replied dryly, picking up the noise of Scarlet cursing and biting something "So you could be dressed in a pink t-tutu and I couldn't tell."

To an observer Yurei looked like she was swinging her 'Blue flamed' katana at nothing at all but it in actual fact she was striking to land a blow her opponent; a woman in red and black armour who had shrunk down to the size of an insect in the blink of an eye. " _Merde!"_ Yurei swore as the armoured insect struck her chest, it felt like being shot, luckily she was wearing bullet proof armour.

"So what do I call you? Skull bunny?" The tiny armoured woman sniggered as she zipped around Yurei.

"I don't care what you call me, bug!" Yurei sassed, retrieving one of her hallucinogenic needles from her belt.

"It's Wasp, rabbit!" Wasp threw back as she flew by Yurei's face.

Yurei predicted Wasp's flight path and moved her paw ever so slightly so the pinpoint of her hallucinogen needle pricked Wasp's chin as she flew by "Ow!" Wasp yelped, quickly returning to her normal size and putting her hand to her chin "What did you just scratch me with?!"

"Funny, a Wasp who doesn't like to be stung." Yurei smiled under her mask, waiting for the psychotropic toxins to work their magic.

"Answer my ques-" Wasp began to demand before seeing a viper coiled around her arm "Oh my god!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, her eyes bulging with fear looking at the dozens of hissing snakes wrapped around her body "Get them off me!"

Yurei then sheathed her sword, grabbed a sleep dust capsule, crushed it in her hand while walking up to the freaked out Wasp before blowing it into her face. Wasp fell to the ground in a snoring heap " _Fais de beaux reves."_ Yurei spoke, while studying the strange looking creature.

Above the battles on the ground Spitfire was soaring in the sky and in a dogfight with another mech, this one was a couple of feet shorter, a lot more streamlined and seemed skin tight with gold, claret and black armoured plating. Spitfire had just weaved out of the way out of the third barrage of mini missiles much to the frustration of the other mech "How do you keep avoiding my missiles!? They were locked onto you!" a female voice complained.

"Oh please, I worked out targeting scrambling when I was twelve." Spitfire bragged, boosting towards the other mech and grabbing her, both of them wrestling in the air.

The other mech was struggling against the strength of Spitfire when she read 'Spitfire 2.6' on her right shoulder poldron "Spitfire? That's what you call this steampunk wet dream?" The red, black and gold mech asked with a little laugh.

"Good one!" Spitfire cackled "And what about you? That suit of yours in a nanobot-weave, right? You pack a lot of punch for such a thin suit."

"The name's Iron Heart and I've taken out bigger rust buckets than you!" Iron Heart trash talked.

"Well then," Spitfire responded, before pulling her head back then headbutting Iron heart with so much force that when she hit the concrete it cracked around her "don't sign a cheque with your mouth that your arse can't cash, darling."

Back on the ground Andraste was having a little bit of a problem, her opponent wasn't in the mood for fighting, the girl with tattoos on her face and arms looked rather timid and nervous. She had been running at the archer and looked ready to fight but seemed to stop abruptly. Andraste had an arrow drawn and was ready to fire at the girl but it didn't feel right to fire at someone who wasn't attacking "Um, you doing ok over there?" Andraste asked, keeping her aim on the girl and doing her best to ignore the other fights around them.

"You smell like a fox." The girl answered, her nose scrunching with confusion.

"Well if I look like a fox and smell like a fox, I guess I'm a fox." Andraste laughed uncomfortably.

"So you're not a mutant or an inhuman?" The girl questioned, sounding surprised.

"What? Look I don't know what you're talking about but I'm a vixen, my name is Andraste." Andraste answered, contemplating whether or not she was being lulled into a false sense of security.

"Oh, I didn't introduce myself; I'm Amka. Wait, no, darn it, I mean Snowguard, my name is Snowguard." She fumbled her words, clearly nervous.

Andraste deduced from Snowguard's mannerisms and youthful voice she must've been young so she asked "Kid, how old are you?"

"I'm nearly fifteen." Snowguard answered quickly.

"God damn it, you're fourteen and a villain?" Andraste huffed, lowering her bow "Well no way I'm throwing hands with a kid."

"Stop calling me a kid." Snowguard pouted "And I'm not a bad guy, you are!"

"No, you are! You attacked us first!" Andraste argued.

"Because Viv said you were hacking government satellites!" Snowguard countered.

Andraste was about to argue back but realised there was no point, this Snowguard character and her friends were clearly not the enemy, she let out a tired sigh before proposing "Listen kid, if I stop my team mates, will you stop yours? Then we can have a proper conversation."

Snowguard contemplated the deal for a couple of seconds before nodding and saying "Ok."

Andraste then quickly retrieved her firework signal arrow from her quiver and shot it quickly into the air before hollering "Guys, hold fire!"

Snowguard responded by shouting "Champions, stop!"

It took a moment for the chaos to die down, but once it was quiet Andraste added loudly "We're going to parlay with these…things."

"We're called the Champions." Spiderman blustered, running over and crouching next to the unconscious Wasp while sniping at Yurei "What did you do to her?"

"Relax, she's just sleeping." Yurei eased, tossing the peeved Spiderman a vial of clear fluid "Place that under her nose and she'll awaken."

"Ow, ow, ow!" Ms Marvel groused, letting go of Scarlet and returning to her original size "Who the heck bites in a fight?"

Scarlet pulled her mask back up and replied sarcastically "Oh I'm sorry it's not every day I'm grabbed by a giant monster."

"Cool your jets Scarlet, we need to figure this mess out." Andraste reiterated, going over to the bound Bullet and cutting through the webbing with one of her daggers.

Soon enough everyone was gathered around with Team Ceartais and The Champions facing one another, mostly with looks of distrust "So which one of you is team leader?" Ms. Marvel questioned, stepping forward.

"That'd be me," Spitfire stepped forward, extending a huge mechanical hand for a shake "call me Spitfire, me and these mammals behind me are Team Ceartais."

Ms. Marvel shook Spitfire's hand despite still not trusting the mech "We're the Champions. I'm Ms. Marvel and these are Spiderman, Viv, Brawn, Iron Heart, Wasp and Snowguard." Pointing to each of her team mates.

"Well these guys are Roar, Andraste, Scarlet, Bullet, Yurei and The Mage." Spitfire introduced, motioning to each hero.

"Great now that introductions are done, we can cut to the chase;" Scarlet cut in "what the hell are you things?"

"Things? That's not nice." Snowguard mumbled, hiding behind Viv.

"Judging from their reactions I'd say they have never seen humans before." Viv hypothesised "Spiderman is it possible these animals are from the same universe as 'Spider-ham'?"

"I dunno', me and Spider-ham have only met a handful of times, his universe just had animal versions of everyone." Spiderman answered, looking at Team Ceartais with wonder.

"So what are you?" Scarlet asked again, with a bit more force.

"We're humans…well except Ms. Marvel and Viv. Big M is an inhuman and Viv's a synthezoid." Iron Heart clarified.

"Humans? Are you guys even mammals? I mean why have you only got fur on your heads?" Mage asked, ogling the strangers.

"Humans are mammals, just like you but-" Wasp started to answer but was cut off.

Roar covered his eyes and gasped "Why are those rats naked!?"

Everyone looked to where Roar had been looking to see two rats rifling through an garbage can that had been overturned in the fight "Ewwww, put some clothes on, you perverts!" Scarlet yelled at the rats.

"Um, why are you shouting at rats?" Snowguard asked, still sticking close to Viv.

"Wait…those rats, I think…I think they're savage." Andraste gawped, feeling uneasy.

"Impossible." Bullet reacted, stepping back.

"Savage? They're just eating old takeout." Brawn snorted.

"We mean they're not evolved," Andraste cleared up, still in a state of fear and amazement "looking at the way they're walking on all fours and the fact they're not speaking English is…disturbing."

"Of course rats don't speak English, they're rats, only humans can talk." Spiderman said, trying to figure out why the strange group of animals were acting so scared.

"Wait, wait, wait! Can Lions speak, or wolves, or rabbits?!" Roar asked, all flurstered.

"Uh, no…animals don't speak." Ms. Marvel cleared up, feeling bad for making her 'foes' feel worse.

"This…this is bad." Mage spoke, reeling from the revelation.

"Ok before this turns into a pity party, we need to know something, why the hell were you trying to hack government satellites?" Brawn brought the conversation back into focus albeit sounding aggressive.

"We didn't mean no harm, we were just hoping to find some clues to some kidnapped mammals." Spitfire answered, trying to remain calm.

"Kidnapped? So you didn't send those robots weren't carrying people, sorry, I mean humans?" Wasp asked, still sounding groggy from being woken up.

"No, there were two wolves, a flying fox, a donkey, a caracal and many others." Bullet implored, hoping the strange mammals would help "So you know about the robots?"

"Yes, four unidentified automatons appeared out of this rift over a week ago, eyewitness reports said they were carrying someone…we all assumed they were humans." Viv answered, cautiously.

"Listen Ms. Marvel, I know you have no reason to trust us but we just want to find these mammals and bring them home, we don't want to cause any hassle." Spitfire offered, keeping a level head despite looking at these strange new creatures known as 'Humans'.

Ms. Marvel contemplated this for a second before saying "Of course, and we'll help you."

"What!?" Brawn and Wasp snapped in unison.

"Even if they are from another dimension, those kidnapped animals are scared, don't they deserved to be rescued?" Ms. Marvel asked with authoritarian voice, obviously trying to stoke emotion in her team mates.

"You trust these animals? They could be telling us a pack of lies!" Brawn parried, crossing his arms across his chest.

"Well you made it hard for them to trust us after you charged in head first and took on the biggest guy on their team." Ms. Marvel criticised, to which Brawn snorted and turned his nose up.

"But what about that bunny? She made me see snakes!" Wasp brought up "She may be cute but she's the devil."

"Whoa!" All of Team Ceartais sounded, as if shocked by something.

"What?" Wasp shrugged.

"The 'C' word is really speciest, that's like one of the worst things you can say to mammals from rabbit families." Mage informed sounding despised, his eyes narrowing.

Andraste took a hold of her wife's paw and asked gently "Are you alright?"

"I'm ok, she most likely didn't know what she said was offensive." Yurei spoke pragmatically.

"Speciest? Is that like being racist?" Spiderman asked no one in particular.

"Like using the 'N' word against black people?" Viv assumed.

"Um, either way, sorry." Wasp quickly apologised.

"It is quite alright, I'm sorry for using my 'Nightmare' needles on you." Yurei bowed.

Suddenly the sound of propellers reached Bullet's ears, it was a sound she was most familiar with living in Zootopia, it was the sound of helicopters "Choppers approaching from the north!" Bullet informed.

"It's ok, it's just Coulson." Ms. Marvel waved off, as a trio of black military helicopters came into view.

"Who's Coulson?" Andraste asked with suspicion.

"Probably the one nice guy in the US government, he asked us to monitor the rift to see if anyone else came through." Ms. Marvel answered truthfully, figuring honesty would keep things civil between the two teams.

"Did he also tell you to attack us?" Mage accused.

"I do believe that was Brawn's idea." Vuv answered.

"Viv!" Brawn reacted, aghast much to Iron Heart's amusement.

The helicopters landed, whipping up winds with their loud engines, a lone man stepped forward from the closest helicopter; he was wearing a simple suit, he was a white man in his early fifties with receded and thinning brown hair but he walked with confidence as if he had done this sort of odd encounter many times before. Without even knowing who was the leader, he approached Spitfire and extended his hand and greeted "Good morning, I'm special agent Coulson of the strategic hazard intervention espionage logistics division."

"The what now?" Spitfire asked, shaking Coulson's hand.

"You can just call us SHIELD for short." Coulson smiled.

000

A pulsing headache. That was the first Clara noticed, she opened her eyes and was met with the uncomfortable sting of artificial light hitting her eyes "…ow." She quietly muttered, trying to remember what happened before she fell asleep…and then it hit her; the robots, the purple cloud, the tingling sensation in her arm, Zoe being grabbed and then, nothing.

"Z-Zoe." Clara gasped, struggling to see without her glasses.

"Oh god damn it." An annoyed voice huffed.

Clara turned and saw the outline of mammal, it had brown fur and was smaller than her "Who?" Clara croaked.

"Just so you know, you just lost me four pudding cups, I was betting you'd die." The annoyed mammal informed, handing Clara her glasses.

Clara put on her glasses with haste and looked at the figure, it was lynx, she wore plain green hoodie and baggy jeans with a set of headphones attached to her ears "W-where…" Clara began, put the pain in her head stopped her from talking.

"Welcome to hell, roomie." The Lynx replied dryly "Or like, hell's waiting room at least."

Clara sat up and looked around her, she was lying on the bottom bunk of bunk bed within what looked like a prison cell, she was still dressed in her clothes but a chunky bronze bracelet with two green LED lights was attached to her wrist "What is this?" Clara hissed, inspecting the bracelet on her wrist.

"Oh that's the must have fashion accessory in casa-de-misery." The Lynx said smarmily.

"I'm sorry, you are?" Clara asked, her head pulsating with pain.

"Esso and you're Clara Bloom." The Lynx grinned darkly.

"How did…" Clara began to ask, but stopped due to the ache in her cranium.

"You've got a security pass around your neck, genius." Esso sniggered "So where did they pick you up?"

"Who?" Clara began, trying to regain focus.

"The bots." A new voice asked.

Clara looked to the doorway to find a forlorn looking brown mare, dressed in a scruffy looking black dress "Y-you're Regina Lowell! One of the missing mammals." Clara yelled, before putting her paw to her head in pain and seething "Owww!"

"You know me?" Regina asked in surprise "…typical, I have to disappear to be noticed."

"Regina, stop." A gentle voice spoke, a slim framed Stag stepped out from behind the horse "Mammals care about you."

"You'd say that, Harper." Regina mumbled, shying away.

"Look, it nice to see that you're safe but I need to know one thing…" Clara struggled to ask.

"Oh, where you are?" Esso cut in, assuming Clara's question "We don't actually know but the robots call it the 'Cauldron'…spooky name, huh?"

"No, no! A bat, there was an Indian Flying Fox with me, her name is Zoe, have you seen her?" Clara forced, forcing herself to her feet.

"A bat?" Harper reacted "Sorry but you and some other mammals arrived today but there was no bats."

"Zoe…" Clara panted, holding herself up by the bunk ladder.

"So, what's your trick?" Regina asked in a reserve manner.

"Trick?" Clara asked back.

Regina waved her hoof and a small whirl of clear water spiralled around it "Yeah, your power. All of us who were taken have powers."

Clara looked at her paws and answered "I have no idea."

(AN/ What did you guys think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; The Team learn more about the Marvel universe, Clara tries to figure out where she is and Ceartais has to jump into action...AT THE UNITED NATIONS!?)


	11. Bottom of the food chain

(AN/ hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Thank you to everyone who has supported this fic so far, can't believe we're already 10 weeks in so thank you for your reviews, reblogs, likes and faves they really are encouraging. On another note I've received many messages regarding 'Prey Upon' the spin off focusing on Alice by ziegelzeig and I can just say please be patient and stop bothering him about it, Zieg is one of the busiest dudes I know and he's had to deal with some horrible trolls over the last few weeks so please let him be, good things come to those who wait. So without further ado lets get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 10- Bottom of the food chain**

The team were initially distrusting of going with these 'Human' creatures from SHIELD but after some assurances from Ms Marvel and her friends, Team Ceartais got into the helicopters with Roar having to power down out of his elixir form and back to his normal lion body. Spitfire flew beside the choppers as they made their way to the SHIELD field office with the duo of Iron Heart and Viv tagging along with her as an escort. Spitfire tried to shrug off the annoyance of the two flying with her as 'Guards' and looked around at the cityscape, this place definitely wasn't Zootopia or California for that matter, the temperature wasn't that high and the clouds blanketed the sky not letting through a speck of blue but it didn't feel cold enough to be December "What city is this?" Spitfire queried.

"Jersey city." Viv answered politely.

"Huh, didn't think Jersey city was big enough to have a whole team of super mammals guarding it…sorry Viv, I forgot." Spitfire commented before apologising.

"No need to apologise, even though I'm not a human or mammal as you call them, I do like that you count me among their kind." Viv said sincerely, the t shirt ruffling slightly in the wind. The synthezoid seemed to have no thrusters to propel through the air or was making noise as she soared through the sky, making Spitfire wonder how on earth the pink plated girl flew in the first place.

"And as for us sticking to Jersey City, we don't. Even though the team is made up of five Americans, a Canadian and a Russian we work as a worldwide team helping out where the other superhero teams won't." Iron Heart explained "Jersey's Ms. Marvel's home turf."

"Other teams? You mean there are more?" Spitfire asked again, surprised by this fact.

"Well of course. There are the Avengers and their spin offs, a few X Men teams, The Fantastic Four, The Defenders, Alpha Flight. Super heroes and villains are everywhere in this universe." Iron Heart answered then guessed "I'm going to assume the whole super thing isn't that common on your earth?"

"Good guess, powers only started becoming common six months ago before that there was only a few members of Team Ceartais who had anything close to a power." Spitfire confirmed "But ever since the purple sky incident it's being chaos."

"Purple sky?" Viv repeated.

"It's better if I explained it so the rest of your team can hear along with this Coulson bloke." Spitfire avoided.

It was a short flight to the SHIELD field office, the helicopters landed on the helipads outside a large converted warehouse that was under heavy armed guard. Team Ceartais was brought into what looked like a large office where many different agents were typing away at work stations with none of them paying much attention to super mammal team, suggesting that they had seen similar oddities in their day to day work. Agent Coulson ordered coffee and donuts for everyone and while they feasted on the caffeine and sugary feast Spitfire explained the team's reason for coming to the dimension along with the explanation of the purple sky incident, the mysterious robots and the emergence of powered mammals. Coulson had remained intrigued throughout the explanation along with Snowguard, who seemed fascinated with the prospect of a world of sentient mammals.

"…And so we have eighteen days to locate and find the missing mammals before our government sends in Camelot." Spitfire finished.

"You understand that if a group of armed individuals make their way through that rift they won't be treated with the same courtesy you have?" Coulson asked, sounding cautious.

"Which is why we need to get this thing sorted out and get back to Zootopia." Spitfire reaffirmed.

Brawn let out a very audible snigger which caused some confused stares to be aimed at the green teenager "You think there's something funny about kidnapped mammals?" Andraste accused.

"Not that, it's just the name Zootopia, it's so cheesy." Brawn chuckled.

"It's name reflects the principles of the city; that many different species can coexist in harmony, be they predators or prey." Yurei informed.

"So what do the predators eat if they can't eat prey?" Snowguard asked, sounding interested.

"Poultry, fish and insects. Bugga burgers are awesome." Mage answered, doubting he could find one of his favourite treats in this dimension.

"So birds, fish and bugs can't talk where you're from?" Spiderman quizzed.

"No, only mammals. What's scary to me is how you folks are the only mammals that can talk in this world." Kion voiced his anxiety, he felt out of place being the only one out of his hero persona.

"Humans, mutants and inhumans are pretty widespread across the planet. They're top of the food chain." Wasp added.

"Food chain…wait a second…do Humans eat other mammals?" Scarlet realized then asked, subconsciously shielding Bullet.

The Champions and Coulson exchanged some awkward looks before Ms. Marvel answered "…only a few species."

"Oh my god." Bullet gasped.

"Hellfire." Spitfire seethed.

"That's disgusting." Mage spoke, feeling queasy.

"Look we're the only talking mammals on this earth, it's just the same as you eating a chicken who doesn't talk in your dimension." Ms. Marvel justified, hating to see genuine disgust on the mammals' faces.

"It's prey you eat, isn't it?" Yurei asked, she wasn't scared but a little creeped out.

"Yeah," Spiderman sighed "mostly pigs, sheep and cows."

"What about rabbits?" Scarlet asked in a confrontational manner.

Wasp looked at her feet before answering "Rabbit meat isn't that popular but yeah some humans eat it."

"We can't trust these guys, they eat prey." Scarlet growled at Spitfire.

"Easy Scarlet, there's no need to lose our heads. This is just how this dimension works, the Champions have already agreed to help us out, we'll find the missing mammals quicker with their help." Spitfire said pragmatically "And if anyone deserves to be scared it's me, I'm the smallest prey mammal on this team."

"Smallest? You're bigger than that bunny over there." Iron heart said, nodding at Yurei.

Spitfire replied by opening up the chest cavity of the mech, revealing herself in the cockpit to the astonishment of The Champions "Like I said, I'm the smallest mammal on the team."

"Oh my gosh, you're a mouse!?" Ms Marvel gushed.

"You're adorable!" Snowguard squealed.

Olivia was about to react sourly but Iron Heart interrupted her by saying at high speed "An entire weaponized mech that is over a hundred time bigger than it's pilot, a projector interface with a neural link clipped onto your head so you can pilot it with ease…it's amazing."

"Thanks, darling. Your suit ain't too shabby either." Olivia complimented.

Coulson cleared his throat, grabbing everyone's attention "Back to the matter at hand, SHIELD will help you find the missing mammals as well but we can't do much without information."

"Way ahead of you." Andraste replied, walking over and passing Coulson a USB stick "That's got all the data about the missing mammals, everything related to their disappearances and all the video footage we have of the mysterious robots who grabbed them."

"The most likely path to finding the kidnapped mammals is to find the creator of these robots." Viv spoke up.

"And judging from the fact that you thought we sent those robots, you lot have no idea who made them." Bullet deduced.

"My databanks are limited, I'm sorry." Viv apologised.

"Don't be, we appreciate the assist." Kion eased.

"Actually I have an idea," Iron Heart cut in, opening up her left palm a blue holo projection hovered just over her armoured hand "we could head over to here this afternoon and ask around."

Mage stepped forward and studied the projection, it was an advertisement of some sort and he read it aloud so Bullet knew what it said "The United Nations Weapon Disarmament Initiative, inaugural meeting at the UN building with special guest speakers; her highness Princess Shuri of Wakanda and Tony Stark."

"Tony's my mentor, Ironman, if you need to know anything about weapons or robotics he's your man." Iron Heart explained with pride in her voice.

"If he's your mentor why can't we catch him after this UN thing?" Andraste queried.

"Tony's probably the busiest guys on the planet, he's a founding member of the most powerful super team, The Avengers, and runs a multibillion dollar company, so usually when we run into each other it's while we're on a mission. So if we want to catch him we best do it as soon as he's done with his speech." Iron Heart answered.

"Whoa, hold up! Is that a typo?" Mage exclaimed, pointing at the projection.

"Typo?" Iron Heart reacted.

"The date." Mage said, causing the rest of Ceartais to inspect the projection, it displayed the date as October 5th 2018 "That can't be right."

"Dudes don't worry, when you travel to different dimensions you'll end up a few months out." Spiderman said, speaking from experience.

"How about two decades out?" Scarlet stressed.

"What!?" A few of the Champions barked in unison.

"We're from 2038…we've travelled back in time?" Bullet gawped.

As the team reeled from the revelation, the Mage thought of Clara and wished she was here to figure this mess out and just to see her beautiful face again.

000

Clara was still shaky on her feet as she was being brought into the communal area of the Cauldron by her cellmate Esso and two other captives; Regina and Harper. The physicist noticed right away that there were no guards patrolling the large open area that looked clinical and cold, all the tables were fixed to the ground along with the benches, there was a large cabinet on the left side of the room with a touchscreen on it. Clara quickly glanced at the downtrodden mammals in the room and asked anxiously "Is this all the mammals you have here?"

"Yeah, like I said we haven't had any bats come through the hatch." Esso said in a tired voice.

"Hatch?" Clara asked.

"That." Harper answered, the stag pointing at the ceiling where a large metal hatch covered the entirety of the ceiling "The bots come through that and bring in new prisoners."

"Have we seen any mammals that control the robots?" Clara questioned further.

"No, but there's a voice that comes through the speakers sometimes…he doesn't sound like one of the bots." Regina answered, despite the mare being one of the tallest mammals in the room she had one of the smallest voices.

"Ok but…" Clara began to ask but was interrupted by the lynx walking beside her.

"I'm going to stop you there because we're not the information desk at the mall," Esso sassed "if you want to know all about this place you should head over to Vanessa." Pointing over to a racoon who was comforting a crying donkey.

"Van's sorta' the leader of us, everyone goes to her when there's a problem." Harper elaborated, looking at the racoon with respect.

"The leader, huh?" Clara mused, before walking over.

Vanessa looked like she was in her early thirties, she a curvy figure for a mammal of her species, a pair of kind eyes were framed by glasses and her face was dotted with multiple piercings "Brenda, I know it's hard but we look after one another here." She soothed, holding the hoof of the weeping donkey.

"Excuse me, Vanessa?" Clara butted in.

"Oh good, you're finally awake." Vanessa smiled "And it seems Esso and the others have been taking care of you."

"That's me, the friendly roomie." Esso quipped sarcastically "This one's called Clara by the way."

Clara ignored Esso for a moment and pressed on with her line of questioning "Vanessa, there are some things I have to know."

"I understand that you're anxious but can you please hold on a moment, poor Brenda here is quiet upset." Vanessa replied.

"Arthur…oh god let him be safe." Brenda sobbed, the middle aged donkey's face was soaked with tears.

"You're talking about Officer Knight?" Clara guessed, trying to keep focused and not wallow in the desperate situation she found herself in "You're one of the mammals who was taking shelter with the ZPD."

"How…" Brenda sniffed.

"I was told about you guys by Team Ceartais, I was assigned to study the purple rift by the government. When Scarlet and Bullet learned the ZPD was under attack they rushed back to Savannah Central, looks like they didn't make it in time though." Clara answered.

"Wait what do you mean you were assigned to this? Are you a federal agent or something?" Vanessa enquired, suddenly a lot more interested in the wolf.

"I'm a physicist, I was brought into the investigation to study the anomaly and figure out a way to get you guys home." Clara quickly explained "But when the bots arrived to take you guys away me and a soldier assigned to guard the cloud were thrown into the rift and ended up here…at least I did, I don't know where Zoe is."

"So we've got a cop and a soldier missing, that can't be coincidence." Vanessa mused "Almost like they separated the authority figures from the rest of us."

"So we're all missing and now two mammals are missing from the group of missing mammals…well isn't that just peachy." Esso griped, grabbing an unopened juice box from the table.

"Esso, as much as we all love your sarcasm, can you can it for a second?" Vanessa grunted at the feline.

Esso just shrugged in response as Clara began her line of questioning again "Now, Brenda, was it? Was officer Knight with you when you got taken?"

"Yes w-we were in the armoury at the police station, he handcuffed himself to Jason so they wouldn't be separated, at least that was the hope." Brenda spoke, her crying had been dialled back and was starting to calm down.

"Jason? Who's that?" Clara immediately asked.

Brenda pointed her hoof to a caracal boy sat on the opposite table, with a six empty pudding cups around him and was gorging on another one "Little Jason, he's the youngest member of our group."

"Thank you, Brenda." Clara replied, she was making her way over to Jason when Vanessa tugged on her blouse.

"Maybe ease off with the questions for now, that kid woke up in a real state, he's just calm down. You don't want to set him off again." Vanessa advised.

"He was the last one to see Officer Knight, we'll need him and Zoe if we're ever going to get out of here." Clara reasoned.

"There's no getting out of here, that hatch is the only way in or out." Regina lamented, nervously fiddling with the bandages on her wrists.

"The sad sack's right, we've checked this place from top to bottom and we've found no other exits." Esso concurred, sipping on her soda.

"The only time we're brought out of here is for orientation or being put in solitary for causing trouble." Harper informed.

"Orientation?" Clara asked.

"Everyone goes through it on their second day here, they take some blood samples, explain the rules and ask you a bunch of questions." Harper answered "A Bot comes through the hatch and takes you whether you like it or not, my advice is to comply because if you retaliate you'll be beaten and thrown in solitary."

Clara quickly formed a plan, when her time came for orientation she was going to memorize everything outside the hatch, doorways, power supply units, emergency exits and everything else. Lucky for her she had an eidetic memory that would store everything in perfect detail. Until that time came she was going to inspect every square inch of the common area, the shower block and her cell to look for any weaknesses and for clues to where she was. Clara Bloom had no intention of being held prisoner, she was going to get out of this place but she needed Zoe and Arthur's help.

000

Coulson let The Champions borrow two SHIELD SUVs so they could drive from Jersey to the United Nations building in Manhattan, luckily the drive was not long and with the added bonus of police escort they breezed through the crazy New York traffic. Iron Heart, now out of her suit and being called Riri by her teammates, drove one of the SUVs while Viv drove the other with members of both teams making up the passengers. The tinted windows hid the amazed and sometimes horrified looks of Team Ceartais as they took in the sights of so many humans and some mammals; squirrels in trees, advertisements with naked cartoon animals and most shocking to them was the mounted police force. "Why is that human riding a naked horse?!" Mage exclaimed, clearly disturbed by the sight.

"Humans have used horses as modes of transportation for millennia, either for leisure, war or agricultural labour." Viv explained in a monotone, turning a corner past the police horse.

"Sounds like slavery to me." Scarlet criticized, still distrusting of these human creatures.

Ms Marvel gave an awkward laugh before replying "Well those horses have known nothing but captivity, they're treated well and are like man's best friend."

"Um, I'm pretty sure dogs are man's best friend." Spiderman corrected, unaware of the can of worms he just opened.

"Spidey, ssshhh!" Ms Marvel hushed, with Brawn face palming himself at his friend's mistake.

"What's a dog?" Bullet asked, her senses finally coming back into sync.

"Uhhhhh…let's cross that bridge when we come to it." Ms. Marvel dodged, avoiding eye contact with The Mage, convinced he would find dogs incredibly disturbing

In the other SUV, Olivia was sat on the shoulder of her powered down mech chatting with Riri and the Wasp who were all discussing how the time difference between the dimensions was twenty years at high speed and spouting out all sorts of terms that the other occupants of the car didn't understand. Andraste looked over at Snowguard and asked quietly "You got any idea what those brain boxes are talking about?"

"No, a few people on my team are scientists in one way or another, myself, Ms Marvel and Spiderman are considered to have 'Normal' intelligence." Snowguard answered.

"And I thought it was bad with Olivia on her own." Yurei smiled under her mask.

"Amka, wasn't it?" Andraste addressed Snowguard by her real name "I hope you don't mind me saying this, but you're new to all this hero stuff, am I right?"

Snowguard nodded and said sheepishly "I've only been with the team for two months, I've been on a few missions but I'm trying my best."

"Well you've got the right attitude as far as I can tell." Kion commented, now wearing a triple XL shield t shirt that Coulson kindly gave him to save the embarrassment of walking around shirtless.

"Right attitude?" Snowguard asked back.

"Back at the parking lot you could've gotten into a fight with Andraste but instead you read the situation and figured out that we just needed to talk things out. That's the difference between a vigilante and a hero." Kion complimented.

Snowguard's face lit up upon hearing the kind words "Thank you, Mr. Roar." She beamed.

"Just call me Kion, Amka." Kion smiled warmly at the rookie heroine.

The small convoy soon arrived at the UN building but was met with crowds of protesters with half supporting weapon disarmament and the other pro-gun supporters with a line of riot cops dividing the two groups. The Champions parked up as close they could but there was hundreds of protesters blocking the way to the building. Olivia had gotten back into her mech and stepped out of the SUV and commented "Another universe, another gun protest. Why is this the one thing that's the same?" while a pro gun protester with a megaphone blasted "THEY WANT TO TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS!"

"Sounds like your America is a lot like ours." Brawn said, the seven-and-a-half-foot tall teenager got some funny looks from both sides of the protest.

"So how are we getting in there?" Scarlet asked, walking up to Spitfire "You want to fly us over?"

"That's probably not the best idea, we may be heroes but the UN doesn't like anyone using powers near the building." Wasp cautioned.

"I could call Coulson and get him to talk to the cops so they'll let us through?" Ms. Marvel suggested, getting out her phone.

While Ms Marvel rang the SHIELD field office, Mage looked at the steps of the building and noticed some worked setting up a podium along with some speakers "Is it normal for people to make speeches on the steps? I thought they did that in that big meeting hall thing?" he asked.

Viv quickly accessed the internet with her mind and informed "According to social media and news networks Princess Shuri of Wakanda is going to address the crowd in hopes of alleviating the tension between the two protest factions."

"Wakanda? I've never heard of it." Bullet mumbled, she was pretty knowledgeable about different countries being a journalist but had never heard of this nation.

Yurei seemed fidgety, her foot thumping the pavement and her hand twirling the feather that hung from the hilt of her katana. Riri spotted this and asked "You doing ok there, bunny?"

"Something's wrong, I feel it in my gut." Yurei said, hating that her hunches were usually right.

"Like the parking lot?" Andraste asked her wife, the vixen's voice becoming serious.

"Just like that, something bad is about to happen." Yurei spoke, her white fur standing on end.

"Wait, what?" Spiderman asked, looking around for any signs of trouble but then got a familiar buzzing sensation in his head "Ok my spider sense is going off like crazy."

Spitfire heard this and began thermal imaging the surrounding buildings but there was too much heat and too many people to pick out an individual she let out an annoyed growl before ordering "Bullet, use your pulse and your super hearing, what are we dealing with?"

Bullet obeyed and cleared her mind, she blocked out the shouts of the protestors and the traffic of Manhattan and listened out for anything out of the ordinary; then her stomach sank as the sound of three guns being loaded reached her ears "Three rifles, all high calibre, they just loaded and flicked the safety off!" Bullet relayed, pointing at the three different skyscrapers.

"We need to tell the police-" Riri began but her voice was drowned out by the simultaneous sound of cheering and booing from the protestors. Team Ceartais and The Champions looked to the steps and saw a black teenage girl in a fashionable white dress come down the steps towards the podium flanked by two bald black women in designer suits carrying silver coloured spears.

Ms Marvel dropped her phone and gasped "They're going after the princess!"

Yurei acted on instinct and jumped in Brawn's arms "Throw me at the podium!" she shouted.

"What!?" Brawn reacted.

"Do it or she dies!" Yurei yelled.

"Screw it." Brawn muttered, before putting Yurei in one hand and launching her over the crowd, the rabbit already had smoke pellets in her paw ready to mask the snipers' view but as she soared through the air her eye caught the glint of a sniper scope, she just hoped the shooter would hesitate.

(AN/ Dun dun dun! Shuri is in the cross hairs!? Will Yurei save the Princess? Please please please Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; The teams split up to find the snipers, Clara learns something disturbing about the cauldron and Coulson's boss wants to unmask Team Ceartais. Please review and c ya soon!)


	12. Skull and Bones

(AN/ Hey folks here's another chapter of the Broken Mirror, as always I'd like to thank everyone who liked, faved, followed, reblogged and reviewed the last update, so without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 11- Skull and Bones**

Bullet obeyed and cleared her mind, she blocked out the shouts of the protestors and the traffic of Manhattan and listened out for anything out of the ordinary; then her stomach sank as the sound of three guns being loaded reached her ears "Three rifles, all high calibre, they just loaded and flicked the safety off!" Bullet relayed, pointing at the three different skyscrapers.

"We need to tell the police-" Riri began but her voice was drowned out by the simultaneous sound of cheering and booing from the protestors. Team Ceartais and The Champions looked to the steps and saw a black teenage girl in a fashionable white dress come down the steps towards the podium flanked by two bald black women in designer suits carrying silver coloured spears.

Ms Marvel dropped her phone and gasped "They're going after the princess!"

Yurei acted on instinct and jumped in Brawn's arms "Throw me at the podium!" she shouted.

"What!?" Brawn reacted.

"Do it or she dies!" Yurei yelled.

"Screw it." Brawn muttered, before putting Yurei in one hand and launching her over the crowd, the rabbit already had smoke pellets in her paw ready to mask the snipers' view but as she soared through the air her eye caught the glint of a sniper scope, she just hoped the shooter would hesitate.

On the steps one of the shaven headed bodyguards stepped forward and aimed her spear at Yurei, waiting to impale her, the rabbit threw the smoke bombs at the feet of the Princess covering the royal and her guardians in cloud of black smoke. Yurei landed on the steps just as the first shot rang out, it missed and zipped over the head of the Princess. The crowd went into a panic at the sound of a gunshot, Yurei had to shout over their volume "Princess get back in the building!"

Princess Shuri was coughing from the smoke but her bodyguards didn't hesitate putting their spears at Yurei's throat. "Keep back, assassin. You're lucky I don't gut you!" One of them seethed.

"Look, we don't have time, they're three snipers and-" Yurei began to protest, holding her paws up to show she meant no harm.

BANG! Another shot rang out, pinging off the bodyguard's spear, which miraculously look unscathed "Okoye, listen to this creature, we need to get to safety!" Shuri implored as the smoke began to clear

The royal bodyguard known as Okoye obeyed her princess and lowered her spear "Deceive us rabbit and I'll put you in a stew." She threatened before taking hold of Shuri by the arm and guiding her back into the building with haste.

"Noted." Yurei responded, following the three women. The lapin looked back and saw the crowd of protestors had descended into chaos and were fighting each other with the cops and some members of The Champions and Team Ceartais trying break up the violence, but then she saw the same glint of light from the roof of the same skyscraper as before. Her gut told her the sniper was about to fire, in a flurry she unsheathed her Katana and jumped up, blocking the line of sight on the princess. The sniper fired the shot and with one swift movement, her blade came into contact with the bullet, Yurei expected the bullet to be deflected but to the bunny's horror the steel of her katana now had a bullet imbedded in it. The princess and her guards made it back into the building safely with Yurei in tow, they hurried into the reception area when UN security staff were already to. Once Yurei knew the princess was out of danger, she fell to her knees and looked at her katana, she felt tears well up in her eyes "Oni… _désolé."_ She whimpered. Her sword had been given to her by her master, the only mammal who came close to being like a mother to Yurei and now it's blade was ruined, she pulled out the still hot bullet and let out another cry when she saw the blade shatter like glass.

"Are you hurt?" Shuri asked the crying heroine, crouching down next to Yurei.

"…I'm fine," Yurei sniffled, her paws trembling slightly "this sword…it means a lot to me."

Shuri looked at the damage the katana had taken and quickly asked "Can I have look at that bullet?" Yurei handed it over and Shuri looked it over, her eyes displaying both wonder and a little anger "This bullet is made out of vibranium."

"What!?" Okoye gasped, taking the bullet from Shuri and inspecting it for herself "How did a sniper get a hold of this? We don't even use firearms, we only use energy weapons."

"I don't know." Shuri mulled before returning her attention to Yurei "I owe you my life, may I know your name?"

"Yurei, your highness." Yurei bowed her head politely despite her crying.

"Well Yurei, once we get this situation under control I believe I can help repair that sword of yours." Shuri promised, putting a comforting hand

Outside the UN building, the crowd of protestors were still fighting one another with the riot cops trying their best to split them up, Spitfire and Ms Marvel had split their respective teams between crowd control and capturing the snipers. Assisting the police with the protestors were Ms. Marvel, Spitfire, Brawn, Roar, Iron Heart, Bullet and Wasp everyone else was pursuing the snipers.

The second sniper shot had come from street level, Viv's advanced eyes and super computer brain had figured out the trajectory of the bullet in a heartbeat; it had come from mini van parked not far away which was already speeding off before Viv could alert the others, The Mage had raced back to one of the SHIELD SUVs and got into the driver's seat "The shooter is in that van!" he barked as he started the engine just a rumble of thunder emanated from the dark clouds covering the city.

Viv floated over to the SUV and got into the front passenger seat while asking "How did you figure out where the shot was fired from?"

"I didn't, I looked for the one guy who ran from the scene." Mage answered, speeding after the van and flicking on the blue lights and sirens of the government vehicle.

Andraste's keen amber eyes saw one of the snipers quickly close the window of an apartment building "We need to get up there!" Andraste said, gripping her bow.

"I can help with that." Snowguard responded, the mystic girl closed her eyes and two massive white wings sprouted from her back and her feet transformed into eagle like talons.

Andraste was amazed by the magical transformation but had no time to admire it "Let's get hunting!" she grinned, Snowguard smiled back and flew above Andraste, grabbing her by the shoulders with her newly acquired talons and flying to the apartment building with speed.

Spiderman's precognitive sense for detecting danger, dubbed 'spider-sense' by his predecessor, had detected where the last shot had come from; the top of the nearest skyscraper across the street. "I'm going after the sniper on the roof!" he shouted, shooting a web line from his wrist.

"I'm tagging along." Scarlet told, jumping onto Spiderman's back wrapping her legs around his abdomen.

"Hey I'm not a taxi service!" Spiderman protested, having already launched into the air and web shooting another line to get higher up the building.

"Less chatting, more chasing spider dude." Scarlet reacted.

Spiderman shook his head and got to the top of the building within ten seconds with the help of his web shooters, as soon as he was on the roof Scarlet hopped off his back. "We gotta' find this guy before he bails, you take the left and I'll take the right." Spiderman planned out loud, not noticing his leg had triggered a trip wire as he walked forward.

"Watch out!" Scarlet hollered, spotting the wire and the vial of clear fluid it was attached to, she leapt at the teen hero tackling him out of the way just as the vial exploded. The liquid splashed onto her face and she let out a high pitched bunny-esque squeal as the fluid corroded through her mask and hood, burning off the fur and ripping through the flesh underneath.

"Oh my god, you ok!?" Spiderman yelled, feeling instant guilt.

Scarlet tore her hood and mask off, revealing her badly bloody and burned face, Spiderman nearly hurled as he saw her mouth was gone,her bloody muscles and exposed teeth of her face but to his shock the wounds began to close up, her lips reappeared and the fur grew back within seconds "Shit, that stings." Scarlet hissed as another rumble thunder echoed across Manhattan.

"Y-you…" Spiderman stammered, both grossed out and amazed by what he just saw.

"Maybe I should've given my full name, I'm The Undying Scarlet." Scarlet spoke, her voice strained from the pain, but she had no time to catch her breath, her long ears picked up the sound of heavy boots running on the other side of the roof "This bastard is trying to run!" she snarled, running around the corner of a large air conditioning unit to see a figure garbed in black jump off the edge off the roof and down a zip line to a lower building. Scarlet gave chase but didn't wait for a ride from Spiderman, she used her enhanced muscles to bound into the air, she could see the black clad sniper had already made it to the other building.

"You can jump high too?" Spiderman half laughed, swinging on a web beside Scarlet.

"Plus super strength!" Scarlet gave a predatory smile "Now let's kick this guy's ass!"

The two landed on the next roof as the sniper was running for the roof access door, Spiderman acted fast and fired to web shots at the door, sealing it shut "No way out, man. Give it up." He shouted at the gunman.

The shooter stopped in his tracks, the sniper rifle was strapped to his back but both Spiderman and Scarlet noticed that his sidearm holster was empty "You should crawl away, Spider Brat. If I can handle grown up Spidey I can handle the kid version." He chuckled darkly, turning around to face the heroes. The man was wearing a black combat mask with a white skull crudely painted on, his muscle bound frame was garbed in black military fatigues but to white bones in a x shape were printed on the chest and in his hand was a uzi, ready to fire.

Spiderman heard this and replied defiantly "I'm not just a sidekick, Crossbones. I am Spiderman."

"You know this asshole?" Scarlet asked, ready to jump out of the way as soon as the assassin raised his gun.

"His name's Crossbones, a hitman and merc. You know, a stereotypical bad guy." Spiderman answered nonchalantly, wanting to irritate the contract killer.

"Tough talk for a kid from the baby Avengers." Crossbones barbed "What do you idiots call yourselves? The Champions? What a joke."

"Well you're going to be called someone's bitch as soon as you're locked up." Scarlet retorted, knowing that stalling would increase the chance of back up arriving, be it her team or the cops.

"Aww what a cute little bunny, you must be the animal sidekick for the Champions. Maybe, I'll chop off that foot of yours and keep it for luck." Crossbones taunted.

Scarlet bared her fangs and snarled "Don't call me cute!" before recklessly charging at Crossbones, the assassin fired his uzi and volley of shots hit Scarlet in the chest but she didn't slow down, she leapt up and drop kicked Crossbones. Winded and distracted, he didn't notice Spiderman shoot a web at his machine pistol and snatch it away before it was too late, Scarlet charged at him again but he quickly sat up and headbutted the ginger heroine with his armoured mask. Scarlet was knocked down to the ground and Spiderman bolted to Crossbones, but the merc saw the attack coming, he dodged the right hook and countered by putting a handheld tazer under Spiderman's jaw and shocking him at full power. Spiderman let out a loud but short yell, he was knocked out by the sudden burst of electricity but before he could fall to the ground Crossbones scooped him up and threw him over the edge of the building. Scarlet's navy eyes bulged and didn't hesitate scrambling to her feet and jumping after her new ally, leaving Crossbones to escape.

Scarlet dived towards the unconscious Spiderman, the web head's body was like a ragdoll hurtling to the ground. "Spiderman!" Scarlet shouted, grabbing him and trying to shake him awake "Come on dude, wake up!" Scarlet slapped his face in vain trying to stir him, the two were plummeting to the street below and there was no way Spiderman could survive a fall from this height. Scarlet thought fast and grabbed one of Spiderman's wrists, trying to find where he shot his webs from "How do you work these damn things!?" she yelled over the thunder but then she found the web shooter, she could feel the mechanism's button under the fabric of his suit. Scarlet pressed the button and a long string of thick webbing sprouted from his wrists, the web stuck to a window ledge and the two jolted when they came to a sudden stop only twenty feet from the ground.

"W-what…" Spiderman spoke hazily, as the web swung them over the traffic jammed street.

"Oh thank god, I thought that skeleton dude had killed you for a sec." Scarlet panted, feeling safe she foolishly took her finger from the button of the web shooter, suddenly they were cut off from the web and they both fell twenty feet onto the street and landed on the roof of a black Bentley, smashing the windows and denting the roof.

"Ow..." Spiderman winced.

"Well at least, you ain't dead." Scarlet gave a pained laugh.

The driver of the Bentley got out of the driver's seat and bellowed "What the hell did you do to my car!? Of course, it's you god damn vigilantes! Causing chaos wherever you go!"

Scarlet sat up at looked at the angry man, he was in his early sixties and had black/grey hair cut in a military buzz cut style along with thick black moustache and groaned "I just saved this guy's life, gimme' a break."

"I'll give you the repair bill you damn rabbit! No one crosses J. Jonah Jameson and gets away with it!" The angry man blustered.

Twenty minutes later all members of The Champions and Team Ceartais had regrouped in the UN building's foyer, the protestors outside had been dispersed and two of the snipers were now in police custody having being captured by Viv, Mage, Snowguard and Andraste. Spiderman's cuts and bruises were being tended to by Andraste, she always carried a basic first aid kit on her, while his wounds were being cleaned he was being questioned by Okoye "Crossbones was the assassin? This still doesn't explain how he came into possession of vibranium."

"He didn't mention anything about the metal, sorry." Spiderman apologised while Andraste applied dressings to his cut shoulder.

"What's Vibranium?" Kion asked, back to his usual form.

"It's what destroyed my katana." Yurei lamented, still holding the broken sword.

"Vibranium is our country's greatest resource, it's a rare metal with extraordinary properties." Shuri added then spoke "I thank you all for saving my life, Champions I am in your debt."

"N-No problem, your ladyship, I mean uh princess, wait no, your highness." Ms Marvel fumbled her words, unsure of how properly address the royal.

Shuri let out a laugh before looking at Team Ceartais and asked "And may I know your names? I am unfamiliar with your team, are you mutants?"

"We're Team Ceartais, your highness. And no we're not mutants, we're mammals from a another dimension where humans don't exist." Spitfire replied formerly, wondering why most humans were asking if they were mutants.

"You didn't happen to come through that rift in Jersey city did you?" Shuri grinned knowingly.

"How do you know that?" Brawn asked, the rift was being closely guarded by SHIELD who hadn't made it public knowledge.

"I picked up the odd energy signature when I arrived in America this morning, I've seen them before whenever interdimensional stuff happens." Shuri explained.

"You make it sound like you get folks from other earths wandering around a lot." Mage commented, forgetting the etiquette of talking to a royal.

"Believe us, this isn't our first rodeo." Wasp replied "We get people from other universes popping up like every other month."

Andraste had finished patching up Spiderman and looked at her sister and sighed "Do you want some pain killers?"

"Nah, I'm fine the acid only hurt for like twenty seconds." Scarlet replied "Shame about my mask and hood though."

"It's not like we have to worry about our identities here, there's no mammals from Zootopia to expose us, we could walk around without our masks and it wouldn't matter." Bullet reasoned.

"Then you won't mind telling me who the hell you are." A stern voice responded.

Everyone turned towards the entrance to see a woman in her early forties with thick brown hair wearing a black uniform with the SHIELD symbol on the top of her right arm, she was marching towards them with a tired looking Coulson beside her. "Ah nuts." Brawn huffed, clearly not a fan of this woman.

"And you are?" Spitfire asked the woman.

"Maria Hill, director of SHIELD and I need all you animals to come with me." Maria demanded "You all need to be questioned about what you're doing here."

"We told agent Coulson and gave him a drive full of intel as well." Kion pointed out.

"Agent Coulson can be too trusting, he didn't clear it with me to release you." Maria parried.

"It almost sounds like you want to arrest us." Scarlet accused, crossing her arms.

"We need to access if you're a threat, you could have told Coulson a pack of lies." Maria stated.

"Well we trust them," Snowguard spoke up "they're heroes just like us."

"I agree, Ceartais mean no harm." Viv supported.

Shuri stepped forward and said formally "Director Hill, these brave heroes just saved my life surely that proves their good nature?"

"You're right, your highness. However-" Maria replied in a more polite tone but was interrupted.

"Well then it's settled, Ceartais are good guys." Shuri deliberately interrupted "And I've invited both The Champions and Team Ceartais back to the Wakandan embassy for dinner and to give them a proper thank you, so we must be off."

"But…" Maria began to protest.

"Ma'am maybe it's best if we let them go, we don't want to damage the relationship between the US and Wakanda." Coulson butted in.

Maria rolled her eyes and said to Spitfire "Fine, but we will be talking very soon"

000

Clara Bloom was frustrated. It was her second day in The Cauldron and she still hadn't found any answers to the questions plaguing her mind; Where was Zoe? Who was keep them captive? And was there a way out? Clara had been taken through the hatch by the bots for orientation but was disappointed when she was taken just outside the hatch into a white clinical room where a different bot took a blood sample and she was made to fill out a very generic questionnaire about her health on a touch screen by the time she had finished it she was given a small kidney dish with a hypo and a vial inside, she inspected the vial and was surprised to see that it was the hormone replacement drug she took every day when she back in Zootopia. The fact that she was given this medication and that she was made to fill out the questionnaire led her to conclude that whoever was in charge of The Cauldron wanted to keep the kidnapped mammals in perfect health.

Clara walked back into her cell to find Esso on the top bunk writing in a little notebook "I didn't have you down as the diary type." Clara commented.

"This isn't a diary, I'm keeping track of all the bets I've got going on around here." Esso commented.

"What do mammals even gamble with in this place?" Clara asked, fixing her glasses.

"Pudding cups mostly, sometimes toiletries, basically anything of value." Esso answered "You want part of the action? I've got 10-1 that Regina will try to commit suicide again before the week is out or you could have 3-1 on that donkey Brenda having a mental breakdown in the next 48 hours."

"That's the sort of stuff mammals bet on? You're sick, you know that?" Clara reacted, sounding disgusted.

"Oh I'm well aware of how sick I am, but hey I need to entertain myself somehow in this hellhole." Esso brushed off, not bothered by the judging stare Clara was giving her.

"Well while you become the most twisted bookie in history, I'm going to look inside all the vents in this place to see if there's any way we can get a small mammal to escape and get help." Clara said, getting out her phone and turning on its flashlight.

"Ugh, that's what your wasting your phone battery on, if my phone still had power I'd just listen to music." Esso wished.

"Actually my battery's lasting a long…wait, what?" Clara gawped, looking at her phone and was shocked to see that it was charging.

"What is it?" Esso asked, looking up from her notebook.

"My phone, it's charging…how?" Clara revealed, completely stumped.

"Hang on a sec," Esso mused, getting her powerless smartphone out of her pocket and passing it to Clara "hold this."

Clara took Esso's phone in her other paw, within a second of holding it the phone screen lit up with the charging symbol "What's happening?" Clara asked, baffled.

"Isn't it obvious?" Esso grinned "This is your power, you're a walking battery. Damn, you're going to be popular around here."

Clara could hardly believe it, she knew it was likely she did have a power seeing as she was kidnapped in the first place but it was still a surprise, albeit disappointing "Great, everyone else gets cool powers and I'm charger girl." She half joked.

"Believe me, you don't want an extreme power, they cause nothing but tr-" Esso started to reply but was interrupted by a furious figure in the doorway of the cell.

"YOU!" Brenda seethed, startling Clara but Esso turned around with an irritated look on her face.

"I assume you're addressing me?" Esso sassed.

"You've been placing bets on me!?" Brenda accused, looking down at the lynx.

"Oh you're not special, I put bets on the professor here croaking when she first arrived." Esso shrugged "Now piss off, we're in the middle of something."

Brenda was not pleased by the response and swung a hoof at the feline, Esso dodged the punched and dove through the taller mammal's legs, running out to the communal area "You're evil, betting on mammals' mental states!" Brenda blasted, chasing after Esso with Clara following, wanting to see what happened.

Esso hopped up on a table "Ok newbie, I know you hate me but trust me you don't want to start a fight." She cautioned.

"You think you're tough!? You think your powers are better than mine?" Brenda reacted, all the other mammals were now out of their cells and watching the confrontation.

"No listen if we use our powers we g-" Esso started to explain but stopped mid sentence and began coughing and wheezing.

"You wanted to see if I'd snap, well does this class as a mental break?" Brenda sniped, extending her hoof "Let's see how you handle a little oxygen withdrawal."

"Stop, you'll kill her!" Clara shouted at Brenda, fearful of Brenda's power.

"I'm not going to kill her, I'm just teaching her a lesson." Brenda replied darkly as Esso fell to her knees gasping for air.

Vanessa came out of her cell to see what the commotion was all about and her eyes bulged when she saw Brenda using her power on Esso "Brenda stop!" Vanessa yelled, running over.

"She deserves this!" Brenda screamed back but suddenly the green lights on her bronze bracelet turned red and an alarm began to blare out from the speakers around the room, the donkey released Esso from her powers and gasped "W-what?"

"The bots are coming!" Vanessa stressed.

Clara rushed over to Esso who was now taking big painful breaths while shouting over the alarms "What's happening?"

"The bracelet detects if you use your powers, if you use them for more than ten seconds or you start a fight you get put in solitary!" Vanessa answered.

The hatch then opened slightly and a bot swooped down and grabbed the terrified Brenda, carrying her off to solitary. When the hatch door closed, the alarm stopped and Vanessa walked over to Esso, who was being helped to her feet by Clara "What did you do?" Vanessa probed, sounding irked.

"She found out about the betting." Esso wheezed before adding a sarcastic "I'm fine by the way."

"When Brenda gets back you two are going to sit down and sort this out." Vanessa ordered.

"Yes Mom." Esso groaned with even more sarcasm.

"Where are the solitary cells?" Clara asked Vanessa.

"On the other end of the Cauldron, it's four creepy glass cells stacked together. I got thrown in there when I first got here." Vanessa sighed, now worried for Brenda.

"Four cells." Clara muttered, looking up at the hatch. The wolf instantly thought of Zoe and Arthur, if they were being held anywhere it would be there, she needed to know if they were alive and there was only one way to find out; she had to be thrown in solitary.

000

From the outside the Wakandan embassy looked rather normal, it was guarded by more bald female bodyguards which Okoye called the Dora Milaje and the building was surrounded by high brick wall however when the Champions and Team Ceartais walked into the building they were stunned by the advanced technology that was everywhere. Yurei was led to a laboratory at the back of the building by Shuri whilst Okoye brought the other heroes into the reception room for refreshments and to await Shuri and Yurei's return. When Alice entered the lab she was once again taken aback by how advanced everything looked "You don't hear of many Princesses being scientists." Yurei commented.

"I'm no ordinary princess, my brother may be king but I rule when it comes to our nation's technology." Shuri boasted as she powered up a computer "I can start my machines repairing your blade and it'll be done by the time we finish dinner."

"It'll be that quick?" Yurei asked, passing the broken sword to Shuri.

"Yes and you're blade will now be forged from vibranium, it'll be able to slice through bullets like butter." Shuri answered, inspecting the hilt and noticing the red feather attached at the bottom the pommel "This is a cute accessory."

"I stole it from my wife's hat the first time we met." Yurei remembered fondly that fateful night in the rainforest district.

"So you keep it on your blade so she's always with you, even in battle." Shuri cooed, placing the hilt on a scanner and began typing away at a holographic keyboard.

"Well I often have my wife with me in battle, I'm married to Andraste." Yurei smiled.

"The vixen with the bow?" Shuri gasped before chuckling "A rabbit and a fox, married?"

"I actually know two other fox and bunny couples." Yurei informed.

"Ok, I need to hear about this but first step on that scanner over there. If I scan your body I can get the blade weighted perfectly for you." Shuri instructed, pointing to a white flowing platform a few feet away.

Yurei obeyed and once she stepped on it a violet light scanned over her body but she noticed Shuri's eyes go wide at the workstation and an awkward expression formed on her face "Is everything alright?" Yurei queried.

"Um…wow. Why on earth did you risk your life today in your condition?" Shuri asked, sounding shocked and a tad angry.

"My condition?" Yurei asked back.

"You're pregnant." Shuri stated.

"What? No I'm not." Yurei responded, suddenly feeling anxious.

"Then how do you explain this?" Shuri questioned, pressing a few buttons and making a nearby screen display a scan of Yurei's body, her heartbeat was on the top of the screen but below there was five other heartbeats detected.

Yurei was caught between joy, shock and fear as she put a paw to her stomach and whispered "I'm pregnant?"

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Alice is Pregnant!? What did you guys think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! Next time on The Broken Mirror, Alice and Luna are faced with their dire situation, Shuri discovers some startling news about the rift, Spitfire is forced into a deal with SHIELD and Clara gets a helping hand with her latest plan. Please review and c ya soon)


	13. The Deal

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/ Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror, but before we start with the fic I need to say a huge THANK YOU! Van from the Dev team noticed that last week that we hit 100 chapters of the Take A Stand series, so thank you to everyone on the dev team who make all this possible with art, beta reading, oc creating and most importantly being my friends AND thank you to all you all the readers who have stuck with this crazy fan fic series. So without further ado let's get cracking with chapter 101 of the Take a Stand series...)

 **Chapter 12- The Deal.**

Team Ceartais and The Champions had been brought into the reception room of the Wakandan embassy, as the staff served drinks to the team and asked for any dietary requirements, the teams finally got to chatting casually, something that they hadn't done since their abrupt meeting this morning.

"So it's a no show with your mentor, huh?" Olivia asked Riri, out of her mech and standing on the table.

"Looks like Tony gave his speech early and bailed," Riri sighed, also out of her armour "he's always like that."

"Who is this Tony guy anyway? You said he's like some big hero." Olivia queried, unwrapping a fresh cherry lollipop and popping it in her mouth.

"His hero name is Iron Man, he's one of the founding members of The Avengers, they call themselves 'Earth's mightiest heroes' and with their roster it's easy to see why. Other than that Tony's an engineer who owns Stark Industries, one of the biggest tech companies on the planet." Riri explained, taking a cup of coffee from the server.

"Sorta' sounds like me, I own the biggest medical tech company in my universe." Olivia smiled.

"Medical tech? So how did you get to making mechs?" Riri asked, intrigued by the little mouse.

"Meh, it was kind of a hobby but I went pro when I decided to become a crimefighter." Olivia shrugged "But my skills in robotics have helped me make cybernetic prosthetics for thousands of mammals, I even made Yurei's arm after she lost her real one."

On the other side of the room, Kion was very conscious of all the embassy staff giving him strange looks that they didn't give the other mammals in the room, he was starting to feel uncomfortable and walked over to Okoye who was standing guard at the door with her spear in hand. "Um, excuse me, General Okoye? I was wondering if I could ask you a question?" Kion asked timidly.

"Of course." Okoye replied politely.

"Why are some of the folks working here giving me funny looks?" Kion queried in quiet voice.

Okoye just gave a smile and answered "Don't take it personally, in Wakanda lions are common so to see one standing upright and talking is a little surprising to us."

"I guess the lions in your country are, well, prey eaters?" Kion figured, feeling uncomfortable with that thought.

"And man eaters." Okoye added.

"W-what?" Kion stammered.

Okoye realised what she had revealed and try to gloss over with "Forget I said that."

"Do lions really eat humans?" Kion gawped, feeling queasy.

"Our world is very different to yours Kion, where your mammals have evolved and made peace, ours have never gone beyond their primitive ways." Okoye spoke "Now if I may ask a question, do you by any chance know a panther?"

"A panther? Sure there's a nice panther family who live in the apartment below mine." Kion answered, wondering why Okoye would ask such an odd question.

"Really?" Okoye's eyes lit up "Tell me, what are their jobs? Soldiers? Police officers?"

"Uh, no. Yanick works at an accountancy firm and Michelle is a fur stylist." Kion answered, growing more puzzled.

Okoye stifled a laugh before sniggering "An accountant and a hair dresser, wait until T'Challa hears of this."

Sat on the luxury sofa in the corner, Andraste was conversing with Brawn and Wasp, who had taken off her helmet. "So you used to be bigger than you are now?" Andraste asked Brawn.

"Yeah, up until a couple of months ago I could switch between my regular body and my Hulk form, much like Roar but my Hulk form became difficult to control and would lash out when angry. I took the initiative and tried an experimental procedure to control the monster." Brawn explained, sounding a little sad.

"It was the only way, Brawn. Everyone thinks you made the right choice." Wasp backed up.

"What was the procedure?" Luna pressed, now intrigued.

"I injected myself with nano-bots to manipulate the gamma-irradiated cells to stop them being triggered by adrenaline caused by me getting angry, there was a trade off though. In return for having complete control of my body I lost half of my strength and size and I can never turn back to my normal, non-green, form." Brawn elaborated.

"Nano-bots? Damn, what a small multiverse." Andraste grinned "Bullet and Scarlet's powers are from experimental nanomachines, it's how Scarlet heals and how Bullet can fight without eyesight."

"How about you? Any powers?" Wasp questioned the vixen.

"I've got nothing, just good with a bow." Andraste shrugged "And you? How do you shrink so small?"

"It's actually my Dad's technology." Wasp answered before adding sourly "Hank Pym was a genius but a world class bastard, I mean the guy stopped criminals as Ant Man but he was disgusting, wife beating, son of a-"

Brawn paused his friend's ranting by putting a gentle hand on her shoulder and saying "Nadia, deep breath. Let's not go on a 45 minute rant about how your dad is the worst, how he ruined your sister Hope's life and how he nearly destroyed the world with Ultron…Just take a deep breath and explain your tech."

Wasp closed her eyes and took a moment before saying "Sorry about that Andraste, I can get carried away when it comes to my old man. Anyway my suit doesn't actually shrink me in a physical sense it just reduces the space between the atoms that make up my body while maintaining my original mass."

"Hence why your punches hit like an anvil when your small." Andraste concluded, politely ignoring Wasp's outburst about her father.

"Pretty much yeah." Wasp confirmed, smiling again after her brief scowl.

At the main table Scarlet, Bullet and The Mage were joined Spiderman, Snowguard, Ms. Marvel and Viv, all of them enjoying the cakes and hot drinks that the embassy staff had served. But most surprising to Scarlet and Bullet was the fact that Viv was eating also. "Wait so Robo-I mean, Synthezoidsneed to eat to?" Scarlet asked, supping on some flavoursome black tea.

"I don't need to, I like to. I like food and drink just like most people." Viv answered, before chewing on the chilli chocolate sponge cake.

"Yup and she farts like a human too, even though she doesn't have a digestive system." Spiderman chuckled childishly, the bottom part of his mask was lifted so he could drink his coffee.

"I was merely trying to replicate the 'Toilet humour' that everyone finds so amusing when we watch comedies on movie night." Viv justified, unfazed by the embarrassing fact Spiderman had revealed.

"Yeah but letting out a really loud fart on a covert mission was not the best time to try it out." Ms. Marvel criticized, munching on a cupcake.

"On the contrary, I believe it is called comedic timing." Viv smiled slyly to which everyone laughed except the Mage.

Snowguard noticed the dejected Mage looking into his glass of orange juice and asked in a caring voice "Is everything ok?"

The Mage suddenly snapped back to reality and garbled "Yeah, uh, fine. Just a little distracted."

"You're fibbing." Bullet called out, pointing to her ears "Your heart rate increased when you said that."

Mage let out a canine huff before conceding "…I was just hoping we could've gotten a lead on those robots we've been hunting, but instead we got tangled up in a damn assassination attempt."

"It's only our first day here, dude. We'll find Clara soon." Scarlet comforted.

"Who's Clara?" Spiderman asked, trying to suss out the situation.

"Professor Clara Bloom, she's a wolf who was assigned by our government to help figure out the purple cloud anomaly, she was taken by the bots through the rift…she's also Mage's girlfriend." Bullet answered, triggering sympathetic expressions and sighs from the Champions.

"I know it's dumb, we only just started dating and yet all I want to do is howl out until I fall asleep." Mage confessed, hugging his arms.

"Wait, you wolves really howl?" Spiderman half laughed.

Both Viv and Ms. Marvel glared at the webslinger and punched Spiderman on either arm, with the team leader hissing "Geez, be sensitive!"

Snowguard tried to alleviate her new friend's sorrow, her body emitted a brief glow before her face turned to that of snow white wolf "If you need someone to howl with, I'll be happy to help, a wolf should never have to howl alone." She offered, her voice the same even with her transformed face.

Scarlet nearly choked on her tea when she witnessed the transformation and instantly asked "You can shapeshift!?"

"Only into animal forms deemed worthy by the spirit of the north, my powers are magic based but have deep ties with the animals and mythical creatures of northern Canada." Snowguard answered, her face still resembling a wolf.

Mage smiled at the young heroine's kindness and replied "Thanks Snowguard, I might take you up on that offer later, oh and call me Kodi." Peeling off his domino mask, the need for a secret identities was useless in this dimension.

"And I'm Hannah," Bullet added, taking off her mask before motioning to the others "the vixen's name is Luna, the mouse is Olivia, you all already know Kion's name, the bunny down in the lab is Alice and this beautiful mammal beside me is my darling wife Robyn." She then kissed Scarlet on the cheek.

"Babe, stop." Scarlet fidgeted, slightly embarrassed.

"Oh my gosh, you two are married, that's so adorable!" Ms. Marvel gushed, her brown eyes shimmering.

"Thanks, but we're not the only married couple on the team. My sister, Andraste is married to Yurei." Scarlet said shyly while trying to shift the attention onto Andraste.

"So there are two bunny and fox couples on the team?" Spiderman asked, finding it odd that the 'Natural enemies' of the animal kingdom would fall in love.

Bullet gave a tired huff before correcting "Luna and Alice are a rabbit and vixen, we're hybrids."

"Hybrids?" Ms Marvel repeated.

"You ever seen a bunny as big as me and fangs like this." Scarlet chipped in, showing off her very canine like teeth.

"Or a fox with no paw pads?" Bullet added, showing her hands "My father is a rabbit and my mother's an arctic fox, Robyn's a hybrid too but instead she's got a bunny mom and a red fox for a dad."

"That's impossible, lapin and vulpine DNA is too different to ever create offspring." Viv pointed out.

"And yet here we are, hybrids aren't common though. There's less than a thousand worldwide." Bullet informed.

"But the mother's DNA is always the most dominant, that's why I look more like a bunny and less like a fox." Scarlet added before calling over "Hey Kion, show these guys a picture of little Mufasa."

"Sure." Kion shrugged, walking over and getting his phone out his pocket.

"Wait, you have a hybrid kid?" Spiderman asked, his mind still processing the fact that rabbits and foxes could have children.

"Yeah, me and my girlfriend were so surprised when she got pregnant but thankfully he got his mom's looks." Kion explained, showing the group a picture of Jasiri hugging the lion/hyena hybrid.

Ms Marvel got up from her seat so she could take a closer looked and squealed "He is the cutest little thing ever!"

"Thanks." Kion smiled, the lion was accustomed to this reaction.

At that moment the doors to the meeting room opened and in walked an awkward looking Princess Shuri and a jittery Yurei, who had taken off her masks and removed her high tech blackout contacts. "Princess, dinner will be served shortly." Okoye informed.

"Dinner, right? I nearly forgot about that." Shuri replied, clearly distracted.

Andraste sauntered over to Yurei, taking note of the bunny's expression causing her to ask "Worried about your sword? Don't worry, you'll get it back soon enough."

"No it's…look I need to tell you something, I need to tell everyone actually." Yurei responded, her ears going droopy.

"Is something wrong?" Andraste asked, the vixen was growing anxious and everyone else in the room was now pay attention to the doe bunny.

"No it's good news, it's just not the best timing." Shuri assured.

Yurei gathered her nerve, took hold of Andraste's paws and confessed "I'm pregnant."

There was spell of shocked silence for a moment until Andraste gave a quiet but shocked "What?"

"The Princess scanned my body to get a perfect weight for my sword and she found heartbeats that weren't mine. Looks like we chose the right donor after all." Yurei explained, sounding awkward. The Champions were exchanging puzzled looks between each other while Team Ceartais looked just as shocked as Andraste.

"B-but the pregnancy test, I was with you when you took it, it was negative." Andraste stuttered, clearly panicking.

"False negatives can happen," Shuri explained, before handing Andraste a piece of paper "but there's no doubt about it, Alice is pregnant with a litter."

Andraste couldn't help but smile when she looked at paper Shuri had given her, as a doctor she had seen many scans so it was easy for her to make out the five little shapes that were her future children "Five…five little kits." Andraste spoke, happy tears escaping her amber eyes.

Yurei took one of Andraste's paw and placed it on her stomach and smiled at her wife "We're going to be mothers."

"Awwwwwwww." Snowguard, Riri and Ms Marvel all cooed in unison at the happy scene.

Scarlet got up from the table and hugged her sister in law then said "I couldn't be happier for you guys but you know this like the worst timing ever."

"Yeah, I mean congrats and all but we've got to get Alice back to the rift and home to Zootopia," Mage voiced his concern "there's no way we can put those babies at risk."

"That may be a problem." Yurei gave a nervous smile.

"Why?" Olivia asked, dashing across the table so she could get in on the conversation.

"I've been analysing data from the rift between our dimensions and I've noticed that when you came through it this morning it got weaker." Shuri answered.

"Meaning?" Bullet asked further, wanting it to be dumb downed.

Olivia had already figured it out and griped "It means every time something passes through the rift it gets weaker, so the next time we use it could be the last leaving whoever left on this side trapped."

"So if we have to use it, it'll have to be when we have all the kidnapped mammals with us?" Kion guessed.

"I'm afraid so." Shuri confirmed.

"No, no, no." Andraste panicked "I'm not having my wife been put in danger in this crazy dimension, oh god she could've got hurt today."

"I'd offer for you to stay here but superheroes are often targets of violence, I can't risk the lives of innocents in this embassy." Shuri said, sounding guilty.

"We understand, we wouldn't want to put anyone in harm's way." Kion replied diplomatically.

"Oh god, what are we going to do?" Andraste fretted, her paws shaking.

"Relax _mon amour."_ Yurei tried to calm her wife.

Olivia thought about their options and only one seemed viable at this moment, but she didn't like it "We best call SHIELD, looks like director Hill is going to get her info after all." She sighed.

000

Clara had always been a heavy sleeper and even in this prison she had no problem drifting off into slumber, her eyes fluttered open after a restful night's sleep and felt an odd weight on her body. The wolf looked down to see multiple smartphones and even a tablet resting on her body, all of them charging. "Morning, my little power bank." A snarky voice greeted.

Clara looked to her left to see Esso storing away more toiletries and pudding cups "I trust this is your doing?" Clara asked dryly.

"Of course, ever since the word got out about your power I've been charging a pudding cup per charge." Esso grinned.

"I would do it for free, you know?" Clara replied, carefully removing the devices from off her body.

"Oh don't ruin my fun." Esso waved off.

"Anyway I thought if you used powers for more than ten seconds the bots grab you." Clara said, putting the phones and tablet on the bedside cabinet.

"You've got something called a passive power, yours is activated all the time like a few others here, all of you passives can't use them for violence." Esso gave a brief explanation.

"So I'm not going to be thrown into solitary charging phones, damn it." Clara mulled.

"Why do you want to go to solitary?" Esso asked, looking puzzled.

"If Zoe and Arthur are anywhere in the Cauldron, it's got to be there. The sooner I find them, the sooner we'll all get out of here." Clara answered, sounding determined.

"And how do you plan on doing that? This place is locked up tighter than a nun's chastity belt, there's no escape." Esso reacted, sounding unconvinced.

"Zoe's an elite soldier, Arthur is cop and more importantly a leader and I'm a freaking genius, if anyone is going to bust these mammals out of here it's us." Clara said, getting up from her bunk.

"Well if you're so determined to get put in solitary you'll have to start a fight with someone." Esso suggested.

"You volunteering?" Clara replied with a smug grin.

"Getting choked by an angry donkey yesterday has kind of dampened my appetite for being someone's punching bag." Esso smarmed.

The knock on their cell doors caught the mammals attention, they looked to see Harper and Regina standing in the doorway "Hey Esso, are our phones charged yet?" Harper asked politely.

Esso looked at Clara and grinned "If you're looking for a volunteer, Harper is the nicest mammal in this place."

"What are you two talking about?" Regina queried, knowing Esso's sneaky expression.

"Clara needs a little help with something." Esso glossed over passing the larger mammals their phones.

"What kind of help?" Harper asked, looking at Clara.

"I need to beat someone up." Clara gave an awkward smile.

Clara quickly explained the situation and her plan, all the while Harper's expression grew more and more uncomfortable. "I don't know about this." Harper said once Clara had finished talking.

"Oh come Harper, take one for the team." Esso egged.

"Well why don't you get beat up?" Harper threw back, nervously stroking one of their antlers.

"Because I already got assaulted once this week and I don't fancy going through it again." Esso hissed in a very feline manner.

"Harper I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important." Clara pleaded.

"But what if I get thrown in solitary with you, then who'll be there for Regina?" Harper worried, looking up at the beautiful mare.

"Wait, what's Regina got to do with this?" Clara pressed.

"Regina's mind can go to dark places, I'm here to stop that happening." Harper said gently as he held out his hoofs and flowers sprouted from them, they were entangled with vines and formed a flower crown which he put on Regina's head.

"Dark places?" Clara repeated, clueless.

"Since I've got here I've tried to commit suicide twice, Harper keeps an eye on me so I don't go down that road again." Regina admitted, sounding ashamed "But Harper, I think you should help Clara with this."

"But what about you?" Harper stressed.

"Ugh, look I can keep an eye on Susie suicide if you get taken to solitary ok?" Esso offered with a groan.

"Really? You'd do that for me?" Regina smiled at the lynx.

"Don't read into it rich girl, I just want out of this place and this is the quickest way." Esso blustered.

"And if you don't fight back it should just be me getting grabbed by the bots." Clara assured.

Harper took another look at Regina before sighing "Ok, I'll help you, just try not to break my nose or anything."

A few minutes later the four mammals walked into the canteen area of the Cauldron, Esso and Regina went over to Vanessa and hastily explained what was about to happen and before the racoon could even give her opinion on the plan the sound of Harper yelling out in pain was heard.

"You think you can steal my stuff?!" Clara fake shouted, gut punching the deer.

Harper fell to the ground and wheezed "I didn't…"

Clara kicked the downed mammal and growled "Don't you dare lie to me, now where's my stuff!?" Clara was about to crouch down and throw another punch but the lights on her bronze bracelet turned red and the claxon rang out in the communal area "Bingo." She whispered.

The hatch began to openand she could already see a bot waiting for her, Clara's plan had worked, she was heading to solitary.

000

It pained Olivia to ask Maria Hill for help but she had no choice, they needed a secure location where Alice would be safe until the mission was over. Hill instructed Team Ceartais and The Champions to go to a apartment building owned by SHIELD, they were met in the parking lot by Coulson who had brought them up to the spacious five bedroom apartment where all their supplies that brought through the rift were already waiting for them. A very smug looking Maria Hill then sat down with Olivia and hashed out a deal; in exchange for every facet of information about their dimension along with access to the databanks stored in the Bella AI unit Team Ceartais would be allowed to stay in this SHIELD safehouse under the condition that they must keep Coulson informed of every step of their mission and they must partner up with The Champions who would keep an eye on them. It felt humiliating for Olivia to agree to these harsh terms but it was worth it to keep Alice and her unborn kits safe.

It was close to 11pm now and both superhero teams were tired but director Hill was still going through the intelligence data that Team Ceartais had given Coulson earlier in the day. "So this Clara Bloom wolf is a government scientist?" Maria asked critically.

"No she was hired by the government but she's definitely not a fan of them," Olivia corrected "she's a physics professor from Zootopia Met."

"She could be used to develop weapons." Maria accused.

Riri and Olivia both let out laughs at this statement before Riri chuckled "You think a physicist can build a weapon? She's not an engineer, damn Hill you've worked with heroes long enough to know that."

"And you've worked with Stark too much and picked up his smart ass attitude Iron Heart." Maria sniped back.

"Look if you want to know who's a threat out of the missing mammals there are only two with combat experience," Luna spoke up, now changed into her casual clothes "Zoe Nightfall-Rojek and Arthur Knight."

Hannah who was sat on a sofa beside Ms. Marvel and Wasp tensed up suddenly, her super hearing picked up an increase in heart rate from Maria Hill, she could also detect her foot twitch slightly. Hannah focused on Maria as she replied "The soldier and the police officer? Yes I read about them." But her heart rate was still high, Hannah could tell if someone was lying with this trick but she could also tell if someone was hiding something, the question was what though.

"Director Hill, we've been at this for three hours. I think we could all do with some rest." Coulson chimed in "Especially Yurei, seeing as she's expecting."

"Fine, but I want a report on these animals on my desk by noon tomorrow, their real names, powers, the whole deal." Maria replied, putting away her tablet.

"Yes Ma'am." Coulson nodded, watching Maria walk out of the apartment with her entourage of agents.

As soon as Maria was out of sight Kodi said "Yeesh, she's a hard ass."

"You have no idea." Spiderman agreed "She's like this with everyone, she only tolerates us because Coulson talked her into it."

"Thanks for helping us out Coulson, we really appreciate it." Robyn said truthfully, shaking the agent's hand.

"No problem, I don't mind helping out the good guys." Coulson smiled "Oh before I forget have you got those information forms I asked you guys to fill in?"

"Yeah, right here." Robyn replied, picking up the papers from the coffee table.

Coulson took the papers and his eyes grew wide as he glanced at the top sheet "Your name is Robyn Wilde-Savage?" he asked, sounding surprised.

"Uh, yeah, why do you ask?" Robyn asked back, looking up at the human.

"Nothing, just sounds a little funny." Coulson shook his head, Robyn could tell he was lying but didn't call him out on it "Ok, I'll check in with you folks tomorrow. Champions, I suggest you head back too, we've got a big day tomorrow."

"Yeah I best head back to Jersey before my Ammi calls and gives me a lecture." Ms Marvel worried, checking her phone and seeing she already had a few texts from her mother.

"I'll drop you off." Viv offered.

"We'll head back to the base." Brawn said, standing up "Spidey, you heading to your place?"

"Yeah, it's only a few blocks away." Spiderman answered, heading to the nearest window and opening it, he launched a web and zipped out of the apartment while saying "Later."

Soon enough all The Champions left and Team Ceartais went off into their bedrooms to get some sleep but there was one team member who was too restless to fall asleep. Robyn was staring at the ceiling wide awake while Hannah snoozed peacefully beside her. Guilt was keeping her awake, guilt for the situation the team found themselves in. Alice would never have had to come through the rift if she had stayed and guarded the gym back in Zootopia and now her sister in law was in a strange and dangerous dimension while carrying five baby bunnies in her belly. This added to the already heavy guilt she was feeling for letting Clara and Zoe get taken and it was weighing heavy on her mind. She wondered if this apartment had any camomile tea to help her switch off, she got out of bed quietly as not to wake Hannah and walked out of her room and towards the kitchen. Robyn had to jump onto the kitchen counter to get to the cupboards and search for some tea, it's then she heard a voice, one familiar and comforting yet completely unexpected.

"Mom?" The voice spoke.

Robyn turned around sharply to see Aaron standing in the middle of the kitchen, the little koala looked up at his adoptive mother with a curious smile. Robyn was completely dumbfounded and all she could do in reaction was mutter "Aaron?"

(AN/ No spoilers for next week! Please review and c ya soon)


	14. Identity Crisis

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with lucky number chapter 13 of The Broken Mirror. As always I'd like thank everyone for their reviews, likes, reblogs, faves and follows for the last update. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 13 – Identity crisis**

Robyn had to jump onto the kitchen counter to get to the cupboards and search for some tea, it's then she heard a voice, one familiar and comforting yet completely unexpected.

"Mom?" The voice spoke.

Robyn turned around sharply to see Aaron standing in the middle of the kitchen, the little koala looked up at his adoptive mother with a curious smile. Robyn was completely dumbfounded and all she could do in reaction was mutter "Aaron?"

"Hi!" Aaron replied brightly, giving a little wave.

"I…what, you…how?" Robyn yammered, jumping down from the kitchen counter.

"You're talking funny." Aaron giggled, the koala was holding his favourite toy triceratops.

"How are you here?" Robyn uttered, tip toeing to her son.

"I'm not here." Aaron gave a mischievous whisper, he then took a step forward and reached for Robyn's paw only for it to pass through like mist "See?"

"Am I dreaming?" Robyn reacted, not believing what she was seeing.

"Nope, you're awake." Aaron answered "And I'm not here, I'm in my classroom with my friends."

"Your power? You're using your power." Robyn gave a bewildered smile.

"Uh-huh, I just discovered it." Aaron confirmed then added "I felt that you were sad while I was in class, so I thought about you and here I am."

"You could sense that I was sad?" Robyn asked, the joy from her voice disappearing.

"Why are you sad, Mom?" Aaron asked innocently.

"Well I messed up…again." Robyn sighed "Remember that mistake I told you about? Well turns out that same mistake has put someone else in danger."

"But you and other mom can fix it, right?" Aaron said.

"It's not that simple, little guy. You see my sister Luna and her wife…I guess you can call them your aunties, well your aunty Alice is going to have some babies and she's stuck in this dangerous place with me and the others until we rescue those mammals." Robyn struggled to explain.

"I'm going to have cousins!?" Aaron asked excitedly, seemingly ignoring the bad part of his mother's words.

"That's what you took away from what I said?" Robyn couldn't help but smile.

"What species is auntie Alice? How many babies is she going to have?" Aaron asked quickly.

"She's a rabbit and there's five of your cousins in her tummy." Robyn told "…and there in danger because of me."

"So?" Aaron shrugged.

"'So'? Seriously? Aaron this is really bad, Alice and her babies are in danger because of me, my friends Zoe and Clara were kidnapped because of my mistake and I need to fix it." Robyn explained, the guilt in her heart feeling heavier.

"So feeling sad is going to help?" Aaron asked with a straight face.

"Well no but-" Robyn began but was cut off by the child.

"Then stop feeling sad and start fixing your mistake, if you just keeping thinking about how you messed up you'll never make it right." Aaron interrupted.

Robyn was stunned for a moment, the koala's words rang true and put her problems is perspective. She shook her head and spoke "And I thought I was supposed to be the grown up."

"I'm the eldest in my class, I'm basically a grown up." Aaron blustered, putting his hands on his hips.

Robyn chuckled at the boy's reaction and replied "Thank you Aaron, I feel a lot better…I wish I could hug you."

"I don't think my powers can do that but if you ever need cheering up just think of me and I'll try to show up." Aaron promised.

"I love you, little hero." Robyn smiled sweetly.

"Love you too, Mom." Aaron said with a wide grin before fading away, even though Robyn could no longer see him she could feel Aaron's presence, it was a comfort and filled her heart with warmth, she walked back to bed, wanting to drift into slumber with this emotion resting within her.

000

The Champions arrived at the SHIELD safehouse not long after nine am, Riri had bought donuts for everyone while Hannah had brewed up some tea and coffee for the heroic guests. "So what's the plan for today?" Kion asked, the lion was dressed in his 'Roar' shorts and one of his t-shirts he didn't mind ripping.

"I got a text from Coulson this morning, there's an ex-con out on parole who might be able to help us with ID-ing the bots that took the kidnapped mammals." Ms Marvel informed while feasting on a powered chocolate donut.

"Who's the ex-con?" Brawn asked, his voice sounding disapproving.

"Phineas Mason." Ms Marvel answered.

"The Tinkerer is out of prison!?" Spiderman gasped, nearly dropping his coffee.

"The Tinkerer?" Olivia scoffed, lounging on top of Kodi's head.

"C list villain, the guy steals and modifies tech and weapons then sells them on the black market." Spiderman answered, regaining his composure.

"Meaning we can't trust a god damn word that comes out of his mouth." Brawn stated.

"Amadeus will you chill for once in your life? The guy's paid his debt to society." Riri cautioned the tall green hero.

"What makes Coulson think he'll talk to us in the first place?" Hannah queried, sipping her tea.

"Because Coulson had a word with his employer, The Tinkerer works for Parker Industries and their CEO, Peter Parker, is dedicated to rehabilitating ex-cons, apparently the deal is Parker will convince The Tinkerer to help us in return for SHIELD easing up on his parole conditions." Ms Marvel explained.

"Well if Pete says it's ok…" Spiderman mumbled.

"You know Peter Parker?" Wasp asked, sounding dubious that the hero would know the world renowned scientist.

"Pete used to help the old Spiderman with his gear, he's done the same for me a few times." Spiderman told a half truth, but Hannah could detect a lie.

"Old Spiderman?" Kodi repeated, sounding puzzled.

"Superheroes in our dimension often inherit titles from our mentors," Viv spoke up "our Ms Marvel is actually the second heroine to have that title, Nadia is the second Wasp, Brawn was one of the many Hulks and Spiderman is just one of the dozens of Spider-heroes."

"Dude that's confusing." Robyn commented.

"Yeah, I mean the seven of us are the only superheroes in our world." Luna concurred.

"And for the next year it will be just the six of you." Alice smiled, actually looking forward to her maternity leave.

Luna however looked glum and said "It's going to feel weird not having you with us on missions."

"You'll be fine, I'm just going to relax all day and read up on this Earth's history, I want to see what's different." Alice assured, stroking her wife's cheek.

Ten minutes later Team Ceartais were changed into their uniforms bar Alice who was staying behind at the SHIELD apartment, Alice gave a good luck kiss to Andraste and waved the heroes off before closing the door to the stuffy looking SHIELD agents guarding the apartment outside. The doe then poured herself another cup of coffee before grabbing a tablet and typing in 'World History' into google.

000

The apartment building that housed multiple SHIELD safehouses was one of the oldest in the city, it was full of trap doors, secret tunnels and of course like any government building it was full of corruptible workers for nefarious individuals to take advantage of. The certain nefarious individual entered through a secret entrance in the basement, conveniently left open by a blackmailed SHIELD agent who in return for their cooperation would not have embarrassing photos of himself at a bondage club posted on SHIELD servers. The intruder was a mercenary, here with one purpose; to kill Alice Wilde. He threw down a leather bag and began to check his weapons before he made his way up the elevator to begin his mission, the mercena-

"For christ's sake Crewefox just say my name, it's Deadpool!" The mercenary blurted out in a frustrated voice "Why the hell are you trying to be mysterious with my identity?"

(AN/ "Deadpool we talked about this, it's called creating tension")

"Oh and here he goes with his stupid Author Note bullshit, you know those really piss off your readers, right?" Deadpool pointed out, the red clad anti-hero began to check his pistols.

(AN/ "Wade will you quit it!? We need to get back to the story!")

"Ah yes, your fanfiction about Zootopia or as I like to call it 'Disney's way to tap into the furry market'." Deadpool barbed with the author.

(AN/ "Zootopia fans prefer to be called Zootopians.")

"Look if it walks like a furry and jacks off to yiff fan art of Nick and Judy doing the nasty like a furry, they're furries." Deadpool chortled "I mean the fandom has a 'Spicy Nick Day' every month."

(AN/ "I knew bringing in this 4th wall breaking bastard was a mistake.")

"Oh you'd know all about mistakes in fanfiction wouldn't you, Crewefox?" Deadpool laughed "I mean all the spelling and grammar mistakes that your dev team apparently beta is one thing but remember I've read your terrible Gravity Falls, Teen Titans and Steven Universe fan fics and holy shit did they suck balls."

(AN/ _Sigh_ "I know how bad they are, believe me. Can we just stop this 4th wall breaking and get back to the fic, please?")

"Tch, fine." Deadpool tutted, kneeling down and getting a kinky maid costume out of the leather bag "Time to make the chimi-fucking-changas!"

000

Alice was engrossed in reading up on this universe's history and what she had read so far was extremely disturbing; unlike her earth this world had a second world war and the events within that dark time made the former assassin's blood curdle, then she read up on the civil rights movement in America and then she clicked on an article about something called '9/11'. Alice felt sorry for the inhabitants of this Earth, Zootopia was far from perfect but it had a lot less darkness than this Earth.

But even though she was focused on reading her instilled prey reflexes reacted when heard something suspicious outside the apartment, her long ears shot up and detected the sound of a struggle outside. Years of training made Alice tense up and get ready for a fight but then she remembered that she was pregnant " _Putain."_ She cursed in French, knowing she would have to go on the defensive to protect her babies. The doe scarpered off the couch she was sitting on and ran to the bedroom to grab her katana and fix on her combat prosthetic arm.

While Alice was hastily getting ready a knock came at the front door of the apartment and voice sang from the other side "Room service." Before the lock was shot out and the door was kicked open, Deadpool walked in dressed in a maid costume with a pistol in one hand and a feather duster in the other "Our complimentary Maid service makes sure your corpse is as clean as possible for when your loved ones identify it." Deadpool joked, twirling around before posing suggestively. When no answer came Deadpool sighed "No one appreciates my comedic side." Before ripping off the maid costume with one tug and tossing it to the floor "Fine I'll go old school for this contract."

Alice had dived out of the bedroom and hid behind an armchair while Deadpool was removing his maid costume, she had her sword unsheathed and ready for combat but if she could avoid combat all together she would. The bunny pressed the 'SOS' button on her prosthetic alerting her team mates that she needed help ASAP before saying "I don't who you are or why you're here but trust me you'll want to leave now."

Deadpool gave a shocked gasp before hamming "Oh Alice, how could you have forgotten little old me? All those awful memories we share, I gotta' say it hurts."

Alice was left puzzled to how this masked man knew her name and seemingly seem to know her "Like I said, I don't know you but you really don't want to make an enemy of me." She threatened, removing to shuriken from the slot on her cybernetic arm.

"It's me Deadpool! Remember the time you stabbed me through butt cheek, or when you put a shuriken through my eye and how can you forget the time you shot my dick off!" Deadpool growled, unsheathing one of the katanas from the scabbards fixed to his back.

"You've got the wrong Alice!" The bunny shouted, throwing a smoke bomb at Deadpool's feet before tossing a trio of shuriken into his left arm while rolling into cover behind the sofa, wanting to get closer to the door "That was a warning, now leave before my friends get here!"

"You're getting soft, Ronin. The old you would've thrown those shuriken at my head." Deadpool coaxed, wondering where his mark was hiding.

Alice shuddered, this merc had called her by the name she possessed when she was an assassin, a name she hadn't been called in five years and it actually repulsed her to hear it spoken again "Ronin died five years ago, only Yurei remains." She spoke with venom.

"What? Ronin, I saw you last month and you were still being a total bitch back then." Deadpool replied, wondering if his target was playing mind games with him.

Alice was confused but she wouldn't let that shake her, she looked at her cybernetic arm and willed it to transform into its concussive blaster mode, a sonic weapon that Olivia had installed into it. She then jumped out from behind the couch and yelled "It's Yurei!" before firing the concussive blastat the chest of Deadpool saw the move coming and dived out of the way and fired a few shots at Alice.

Alice narrowly avoided the shotsand took cover behind a bookcase, Deadpool then laughed "What the hell happened to you? Did Doctor Strange transform you into a rabbit or something?"

"I've always been a rabbit!" Alice snapped, popping out from behind cover and throwing a few nightmare needles at Deadpool which he deflected with his sword.

"Rabbit, Woman, who cares? There's a fifty million bounty on your head and I'm coming to collect." Deadpool jabbed, the merc had seen much crazier stuff than a bunny with a robot arm.

"Woman?" Alice uttered, growing more confused and anxious by the second.

"What's up doc?" Deadpool mocked "Lost your nerve without Andraste to back you up?"

Alice was about to respond but a flash bang rolled next to her feet before she had time to react it exploded with a bright light and a loud bang that made the assassin stumble back, she dropped her katana and her ears were ringing. A rush of thoughts passed through her head; _how did I make such a rookie mistake? What is this idiot talking about? Why am I feeling so scared?_ And then she realised, it was because she was carrying her babies in her womb. Alice had always been a fearless warrior both as a villain and hero but now she had something to fear, her children getting hurt. As the bright spots in her eyes began to fade and the ringing in her ears ceased she heard a gun cock, she looked to see Deadpool standing above her with a gun aimed at her head "Any last words bun bun?"

Alice knew she couldn't dodge the shot if he fired, out of sheer desperation she spoke the truth "I'm pregnant."

"Huh?" Deadpool sounded.

"I'm pregnant, there's a litter of kits in here." Alice said, putting her paw to her stomach.

"Bullshit." Deadpool brushed off.

"It's true!" Alice implored "Let me reach into my pocket and get out a picture of my scan."

"You try anything and I'll go watership down on your rabbit ass, you hear me?" Deadpool warned.

Alice didn't get the reference but nodded anyway, she reached into her pocket and retrieved the folded piece of paper Shuri had given her the day before then passed it to Deadpool. "See, five baby bunnies." She said, her voice trembling.

Deadpool unfolded the piece of paper and looked at the scan, he didn't exactly know what to look at but this would be too elaborate a ploy to execute on a whim. The mercenary flicked the safety on his gun and stuffed back in it's holster, he then childishly stamped his feet and huffed "No fair! Dammit I thought that $50 million was mine!"

"Sorry, I guess." Alice replied, standing up.

"Ugh, why did you have to be pregnant? Actually why are you a rabbit now!?" Deadpool ranted, sheathing his katana.

"I've always been a bunny." Alice stated, returning her cybernetic arm to normal mode "Me and my friends are from a world made up of sentient mammals."

"Typical!" Deadpool seethed, crossing his arms "I get the wrong Alice Wilde from another dimension."

"Are you saying there's another Alice Wilde? A human version of me?" Alice questioned, her mind bursting with questions.

"Well, duh. Is this your first time travelling the multiverse? Everyone has a version of themselves on every alternate Earth." Deadpool responded, staring down at the small mammal.

Alice was reeling from this bombshell, it blew her mind but she needed to know more "Deadpool, was it? Would like a cup of coffee?"

000

The Champions and Team Ceartais arrived at Parker Industries to find a couple of interns waiting for them at the entrance of the building, they gave them all visitor passes and escorted them to the technician lab where broken equipment from across all labs could be prepared. The heroes entered the lab to find only two people within, one was an athletic looking man in his thirties looking on as another man this one short, bald and in his sixties was repairing a circuit board. The younger man looked up at the new arrivals and smiled "Good morning, welcome to Parker industries."

"Dr. Parker, thank you for letting us come here today." Ms Marvel replied politely.

"Please, call me Peter or Pete, like this web head here." Peter grinned, playfully punching Spiderman in the arm.

"Good to see you, Pete." Spiderman replied, sounding happy to see the scientist.

"And these are Team Ceartais." Ms Marvel introduced the super mammals.

"Ah yes, I read about them in the Daily Bugle this morning, seems like old Jameson doesn't like you very much." Peter smiled at Scarlet.

"You mean that old guy who yelled at me for saving spidey's life? That guy's a jerk." Scarlet replied which earned a chuckle from Peter.

"So what's your team's deal? Mutants? Inhumans? Aliens?" Peter quizzed.

"We're from another dimension, where mammals are intelligent and humans never happened." Spitfire answered.

Mage's eyes went wide and whispered to Snowguard "Did that guy just say aliens?"

"Yeah." Snowguard whispered back.

"Aliens exist?" Mage whispered again, sounding shocked.

"Of course, if you're lucky you might meet a few while you're on this earth." Snowguard grinned at the flummoxed wolf.

"Well let's get down to business shall we? Phineas, why don't you come over and say hi?" Peter called over to the older man in a white lab coat.

The old man reluctantly got up from his work table and walked over to the group of heroes "Good morning." Phineas spoke, avoiding eye contact with the heroes.

"Hey Tinkerer." Brawn replied, deliberately emphasising his villain name.

Phineas tensed up and looked down at his feet upon being called by his alter ego, Peter saw how uncomfortable his employee was and said to Brawn "That was unnecessary."

"I'm just calling him by his name." Brawn responded smugly.

"Peter, it's ok…" Phineas mumbled.

"Phineas made a mistake, he's paid for that mistake and is working to be a better man." Peter defended, putting a comforting hand on Phineas' shoulder.

"The only mistake I see is yours, hiring a villain." Brawn replied.

"Ok that's it!" Iron Heart reacted, using her boosters to get off the ground and grab Brawn by the ear "Excuse me while I go talk some sense into this fool."

"Riri! Stop!" Brawn whined, as he was dragged out of the lab by Iron Heart.

"Not a chance!" Iron Heart replied, sounding pissed off.

The door closed and Peter smiled "I like her style."

"We're sorry for Brawn's rudeness Mr. Mason." Viv apologised "He's got a good heart but can be a little bull headed sometimes."

"It's fine." Phineas gave a sad smile "I understand his distrust."

"Agent Coulson told us that you were looking to identify the creator of some robots?" Peter changed the subject.

Andraste passed Phineas one of the USB sticks with the case data on this "On this drive there's video recordings and weapons data of two robots who have been kidnapping mammals from our dimension and bringing them to this one." She informed.

Phineas took the stick and plugged it into a computer on a nearby workstation, it only took him ten seconds to bring up the video file captured from the old Spitfire mech and as he watched the fight his eyes filled with wonder "Amazing." He whispered.

"Any ideas Mr. Mason?" Spiderman asked, trying to be polite to old foe of his mentor.

"Their design looks familiar, I'll have to analyse their weapon data to get something more concrete in mind." Phineas answered, seeming intrigued by the bots.

"I'll bring up the all the analysis I collected." Spitfire offered, stepping over and brining up the files for the former villain.

"While you guys look into that, I'll borrow Spiderman." Peter said, motioning to Spiderman to join him at his work bench.

Spiderman walked over to Peter, pre-emptively removing his web shooters and handing them to Peter "Want to tune them up?"

"Never hurts to keep them in working condition." Peter said before asking in a quiet voice "I heard about what happened at the UN, you ok?"

"Yeah, the only thing that's bruised is my ego, I got cocky and Crossbones took advantage of that." Spiderman replied, sounding downtrodden.

"Crossbones is one of the toughest guys I've ever fought, so don't let it get you down." Peter said.

"Scarlet saved my life twice yesterday, she took acid to the face for me and stopped me falling to my death. I mean she has a healing factor but I still feel guilty about it." Spiderman lamented, glancing over at Scarlet who was casually chatting with Wasp.

"Miles, she's probably been in the hero game longer than you have." Peter reasoned, taking apart the web shooters and inspecting the firing mechanism.

"I've been Spiderman for three years, Pete, I shouldn't be making these mistakes at this point." Spiderman self criticised.

"So? I was Spiderman for nearly twenty years before I semi-retired and I messed up all the time. But I look at you and can see you're already on the way to be a better Spiderman than I ever was." Peter encouraged, using a mini screwdriver to tighten the trigger on the web shooter.

"You're only saying that." Spiderman sighed, not believing his mentor.

"Ok let's look at the evidence. I became an Avenger at 22, you got in at 15 and by 16 you, Ms Marvel and Nova had enough of their politized B.S and took a stand, The Champions is a great team and what they stand for is way more mature than what the squabbling adults in The Avengers could ever achieve." Peter rallied, closing up the web shooter.

Spiderman let out a small laugh before saying "Aren't you technically still an Avenger?"

"I'm a reservist. The only way I'd put back on my spidey costume is if the world was ending or something." Peter corrected, handing back his protégé the webshooters.

Across on the other side of the lab Bullet had heard everything that Peter and Spiderman had said, now understanding why she had detected the hero's lie earlier, she had no intention of blabbing about Peter Parker's former job or that Spiderman's real name was Miles she just thought it was nice that a seasoned warrior had passed on their legacy to a newer generation just like Marian and Robin senior had done with her and the others with the ceartais project. Scarlet then caught Bullet off guard with a quick kiss on the cheek and linking onto her arm, this unexpected case of P.D.A made Bullet smile "Someone's affectionate today. You doing ok, princess?"

"Better than ok, I got some good advice last night." Scarlet replied.

"Advice? Who from?" Bullet queried.

Before Scarlet could answer, Team Ceartais' ear pieces all buzzed with Bella's voice " **S.O.S alarm activated."**

The Champions in the room wore confused expressions as Team Ceartais' demeanour turned suddenly serious, Andraste feared the worst, she quickly put her hand to her earpiece and asked "Bella who's alarm is going off?"

" **Yurei's S.O.S button on her cybernetic arm has just been triggered, she does not seem to be wearing her earpiece so I can not contact her."** Bella replied.

"No, no, no!" Andraste panicked "We have to get back to the safehouse, now!"

"What's going on?" Ms Marvel asked, wondering what the super mammals were fretting about.

"Alice has triggered her S.O.S button, it means she's in danger!" Scarlet half growled.

Snowguard didn't hesitate in sprouting her angel like wings and offering "Andraste, I can get you there!"

"Let's go!" Andraste nodded, already running out the door of the technician lab.

Phineas and Peter could see that the heroes needed to leave, the ex-con replied "I'll look into the files you've gave me and call you later."

"Thank you Mr. Mason." Spitfire replied quickly dashing out of the room with all the other heroes following closely behind.

000

Snowguard had never flown so fast in her life, zipping between the skyscrapers of Manhattan with as much speed as she could muster while carrying the small and light vixen heroine in her arms. "Please be ok, please be ok, please be ok." Andraste repeated over and over in a frantic manner.

"She'll be alright, Andraste. Alice is a tough bunny." Snowguard tried to ease, noticing that Iron Heart was now flying beside her carrying Scarlet, likewise with Spitfire carrying Bullet and Viv carrying Mage, she assumed the others were coming by car.

"Where the hell are the SHIELD agents, I can't get a hold of them!" Iron Heart raged.

The flying group turned the corner and could see the building where the safehouse was, Spitfire turned on her thermal imaging and immediately spotted the small shape of a rabbit standing next to a tall human figure "Alice is alive, but my thermal imaging shows there's someone in the apartment with her!" Spitfire relayed, ready for a fight.

"We busting through the windows?" Mage asked trying to ignore that he was a couple of hundred feet off the ground.

"That is unwise, the windows of that apartment are bulletproof however there is an open window in the master bedroom." Viv assessed and informed, scanning the area.

Andraste spotted the open window with it's curtains fluttering in the wind, she drew an arrow ready and asked "Snowguard, can you make it through that small gap?"

"Yes." Snowguard replied, picking up speed as she approached the window, when she was a few feet away she made her wings disappear with a flash of light and both her and Andraste landed in the bedroom with ease. Andraste didn't wait for the others, she charged out of the bedroom with her bow ready.

Andraste ran into the open area of the apartment ready to battle but instead found Alice looking at photos on a phone that a red and black costumed man was showing her "This is my little girl, Ellie." Deadpool gushed.

"Oh my goodness, she's adorable." Alice cooed, holding a cup of coffee.

Andraste was dumbstruck, she could see from the damage around the room that a fight had ensued but her wife and the heavily armed man were chatting like old friends over coffee and the leftover donuts from this morning "Alice?" Andraste gawped, putting her arrow back in her quiver.

Alice looked up, a little shocked and gasped "Luna? You're back already?"

"That's Andraste? Ok her being a fox makes total sense; predatory, skinny, ginger." Deadpool commented, looking at the vixen.

"Your S.O.S alarm…" Andraste uttered, trying to decipher the confusing scene before her.

"Oh I'm sorry, I forgot I pressed that." Alice realized.

"Well I did try to kill you, so it's my bad." Deadpool brushed off as the other heroes rushed in.

"DEADPOOL!?" Viv, Iron Heart and Snowguard gasped.

"Oh hey, kids. I haven't seen you guys in ages." Deadpool waved, not fazed by the angry eyes aimed at him.

"What are you doing here!?" Iron Heart demanded, aiming her repulsor beams at the anti-hero.

"I came here to kill Alice Wilde, but turns out I got the wrong Alice Wilde. But this bunny is such a sweetheart, she made me some coffee to make up for the fifty million I just lost on this contract." Deadpool answered, smiling under his mask.

"You came here to kill Alice!?" Scarlet bared her fangs.

"Easy Scarlet, he's actually been very informative." Alice eased, but Andraste rushed over and tackled Alice in a hug.

"I thought…I thought you were hurt." Andraste began to cry.

Alice hugged her vixen back "Hush, _mon amour_ , I'm ok and so are the babies." She soothed.

"Can someone explain what the hell is going on?" Mage asked, realising that nothing in this universe made sense.

Alice was still hugging the weeping Andraste when she answered "We need to get Coulson here, he owes us some answers."

"Why?" Viv reacted.

"Because this universe already has an Alice Wilde and she isn't a hero." Alice answered, wishing that what Deadpool had told her was not true.

000

Clara was looking all around her as she was carried through the cauldron, she was taking every minute detail of each corridor, every doorway and control panel she passed by as the mysterious bot carried her towards solitary. There were other bots patrolling the cauldron, carrying crates and doing repairs, not even registering Clara's presence as she was carried pass them. The bot carrying her then stopped in front of a door, a scanner ran across the bot's face before it opened and that's when Clara saw the solitary cells. They were four cube-like cells with transparent walls, a cot and a toilet, the wolf saw Brenda snoozing in her cot but then she saw someone she had prayed was alive "Zoe!" Clara called out.

The worn out flying fox looked up and suddenly she seemed energised "Professor Bloom!?" The Bat screeched.

"Zoe, the rest of the mammals are in another part of this place!" Clara blurted out.

"I know, the donkey told me." Zoe replied, looking relieved to see a friendly face.

Clara quickly glanced at the other cells and noticed someone was missing "Wait, where's officer Knight?" she questioned.

"He's not with you!?" Zoe asked back sounding shocked, the bat's fatigues seemed ragged and hand some dried blood on them.

"No he's…" Clara began but trailed off when she realised that she was being led past the solitary cells "Wait, where are you taking me!?" She demanded of the bot, who of course stayed silent.

"Professor?!" Zoe panicked, hammering her paws on her cell door.

Clara didn't know what was coming next but she knew it was something bad, before Zoe was out of earshot she shouted "Zoe you've got to save the others! They need you!".

Clara began to squirm and tremble as she was carried up a staircase and through another set of doors, the room the bot had taken to looked like nothing else in The Cauldron; the architecture seemed to mimic a European gothic style, complete with stone floors and carvings in the wall, the room was lit by candlelight and filled the physicist with dread. The bot suddenly dropped her to the cold stone floor and groaned "Ow."

"You're something special, Professor Bloom." A deep voice said from the shadows.

"W-who's there?" Clara stammered, getting to her feet while realising the voice was not robotic but natural.

"Your captor, of course." The voice answered, Clara could see a tall figure looming beyond the candlelight "You see most of my prisoners are preoccupied with their depression or making it through the day but you aren't like that. You're determined to figure out what this place is and escape."

Clara was terrified but displayed a front of bravery "Why have you brought me here?" she growled.

"To reward your tenacity, I can't let you escape but I can tell you what this place is." The voice teased.

"Some freaks sick fantasy?" Clara spat, pretty sure her knees were shaking.

The figure let out a deep chuckle before stepping into a light, Clara's breath caught in her throat as she looked upon her captor, the figure was garbed in a dark green cloak, his body covered in a silver coloured armour, his mask was the same colour as his armour only two slits in the mask revealing a pair of brown eyes "My name is Victor Von Doom and this is my cauldron."

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! It's Doom! What does he want? Where is Arthur? What did Deadpool tell Alice? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Alice and Luna discover some disturbing truths, Clara and Doom have a little chat and back in Zootopia Jack Savage needs Nick's help. So please review and c ya on the 24th September, I'm taking next week off to deal with some family business.)


	15. Doom

(AN/ Hey folks Garouge/crewefox here with a new chapter of The Broken Mirror. Thank you for being patient during my 1 week break to take care of some family business, so thank you for all the messages of support and all the positive buzz surrounding the fic/ So without further ado lets get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 14 - Doom**

The figure let out a deep chuckle before stepping into a light, Clara's breath caught in her throat as she looked upon her captor, the figure was garbed in a dark green cloak, his body covered in a silver coloured armour, his mask was the same colour as his armour only two slits in the mask revealing a pair of brown eyes "My name is Victor Von Doom and this is my cauldron."

Clara didn't know what to make of the figure before her, he looked like no mammal she had ever seen before and if it wasn't for his eyes and natural sounding voice she'd be convinced this Doom character was just another robot. "Von Doom? Sounds like a stereotypical European bad guy name." Clara sassed, trying to hide her fear.

"European? Yes. Bad guy? That's debateable." Doom said, studying the she wolf.

"You've kidnapped innocent mammals and are keeping them prisoner, I think that constitutes you being a bad guy." Clara pointed out, subconsciously baring her teeth expecting to be attacked.

"Good and bad are just labels, when creating something that will benefit everyone the imprisonment of a few lowly peasants from another world does not strain Doom's conscience." Doom replied, not intimidated by the wolf's sharp fangs.

Clara was scared but she still sniggered "Ok so three things, one; there is a significance between good and bad. Two; screw you, don't call me a peasant and three; what kind of narcissistic asshole refers to themselves in the third person?"

Doom chuckled again before crooning "If you knew of Doom, you'd be cowering in fear and not speaking with such insolence."

"Oh I'm scared but I can't resist calling out someone's dickish behaviour." Clara confessed.

Doom nodded as if he was impressed by the wolf's spirit "You have a fire about you Professor, Doom respects that. Now let's see if your mind is just as impressive."

"Excuse me?" Clara responded, looking up at the towering armoured man.

"Doom has been watching you on the security cameras, you've been asking all your fellow prisoners for information, inspecting every nook and cranny, you even staged a fight just so you could find that bat." Doom listed "So now that you've had a look around the cauldron, I want to hear your theory about what this place actually is."

Clara did have a theory and if this creep was willing to confirm it she'd go along with his little game "The architecture and design of the holding cells and the communal area are functional and compact, when I was being dragged to solitary I noticed bulk head doors along with exposed heating pipes and maintenance hatches in hallways that lead me to an answer, but then I came into this room with and the floor is stone, there are gargoyles carved into the pillars and it even smells like an old castle. This room should not exist in the cauldron, it's an anomaly, but if I hadn't seen this room I would've said the cauldron is a ship of some kind."

"Well done." Doom praised "You truly are the smartest peasant of the rabble."

"What I can't figure out is why you're holding us captive, I know it's because of our powers, but to what end I don't know." Clara pressed, hoping for an answer.

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait for that answer, Doom's grand design is almost ready, once it is complete you and the other prisoners will be returned to your precious Zootopia." Doom replied.

"You expect me to believe that?" Clara reacted, unconvinced by the masked man.

"You doubt Doom's intentions? Very well, in the spirit of truth, ask your petty questions and they'll be answered accordingly." Doom proposed.

Clara wouldn't get the burning question answered but if she could gather more information about this place she wasn't going to pass up the opportunity "What are you? Species wise? Because you're like no mammal I've ever seen."

"Doom belongs to a species known as homo sapiens, commonly referred to as humans, a member of the primate mammal family." Doom answered clearly.

Clara let the information sink in before remembering "Primates went extinct millions of years ago on my earth, some theories suggest they were wiped out by a virus."

"Well on Doom's world, Humans are the only sentient species on the planet, other mammals and even fellow primates are what you refer to as 'Savage'." Doom informed, taking pleasure in seeing how uncomfortable this made Clara.

"Oh god…" Clara muttered, the ramifications of this knowledge launched a rush of questions in her brain but she knew she had to remained focused "These 'Humans' are the dominant species on this Earth, are they like the mammals of my world?"

"Society wise; yes. Doom researched your Earth and discovered that the major religions are active in both universes such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and so on. Countries, borders and histories largely remain the same however there are some notable absences from this earth's very bloody timeline." Doom explained.

"So what's your deal? If humans are like civilised mammals then one shouldn't be wearing armour and a green robe." Clara digged.

"Doom is the supreme lord of Latveria, it's Doom's duty to protect the country's citizens and it's borders with my powers and technology." Doom boasted, confusing Clara who had never heard of Latveria.

"…Ok, I've got another question." Clara informed "Where's Arthur Knight?"

"Who?" Doom responded.

"A blue furred Eurasian wolf, has powers, got an English accent?" Clara listed "He was kidnapped by your robots."

"They are called Doom Bots," Doom corrected "and as for the location of your fellow canine I'm afraid he was left behind."

"Left behind?" Clara asked, puzzled.

"When the Doom Bots arrived back in this universe they had realised they had two stowaways, the wolf who handcuffed himself to the caracal boy and that feisty flying fox. The bat was deemed useful for the possible military secrets she could provide, but the wolf was dead weight, so he was separated from the caracal and was left sleeping on the ground." Doom answered.

The fact that Arthur wasn't in the cauldron was a relief and a worry, the relief came from knowing he wasn't dead and the worry came from having one less ally on this ship "Alright, now about Zoe, have you hurt h-"

Clara was abruptly cut off by the sound of an alarm emanating from the next room, she turned to face the door with curiosity while Doom seethed "No!"

The armoured man stormed out of the gothic stone room and into the cold and metallic hallway where the solitary cells were located, the cell that held Zoe was empty and it's door was wide open, the bewildered donkey Brenda who was in the other cell was looking around with fear and panic. Clara walked up beside Doom and snidely asked "Was this part of Doom's grand design?"

Doom let out a frustrated grunt before grabbing Clara by the scruff of the neck, dragging to the vacant cell and tossing her inside, Clara let out a canine whine as she was thrown at the wall. As she struggled back to her feet Doom closed and locked the door while saying "You are part of the grand design but the bat isn't, so when I catch her Doom will take pleasure in breaking every bone in that filthy peasants body."

000

"Me and Alice are villains!?"Andraste yelped at Deadpool, the rest of Team Ceartais and The Champions had arrived with the majority of them eyeing the mercenary with caution, especially Brawn.

"Yup, big time, I mean even I think you're human counterparts are assholes." Deadpool replied, the lower part of his mask was pulled up so he could munch on one of the leftover donuts.

"If they're big time villains, then how come none of us have heard of them?" Ms Marvel questioned, doing her best not to stare at Deadpool's heavily scarred mouth and chin.

"Because you teen titans rip offs fight off regular super villains, the human Ronin and Andraste are the top assassins in the underworld, these are the sort of bad guys that'll accept any contract and won't blink if they have to shoot a child…believe me I've seen the aftermath of one of their hits." Deadpool answered, sounding oddly sombre.

"I am trying to access the SHIELD archives on the codenames you've given, the files exist but my security clearance won't allow me access." Viv informed.

Andraste was sat next to Alice, the bunny was comforting the vixen by stroking her tail, she took a guess at what her wife was thinking and calmed "You're not like that and I'm no longer a villain, so stop worrying."

"Hold up," Brawn cut in "you used to be a villain?"

"Yes, I was an assassin. My codename used to be Ronin." Alice answered honestly.

"So what you just magically became good over night?" Brawn blustered.

"Amadeus." Iron Heart spoke in a warning tone.

"No, I fell in love." Alice spoke, looking at Andraste "The moment I met Luna my life changed, I was resistant to change, I feared a normal life…but Luna loved me despite my countless sins, being with her made me want to be a better mammal."

"You should've told us." Brawn said, sounding confrontational.

"Hey, back off." Scarlet snapped at Brawn "That's my sister in law you're talking to."

"Yeah Brawn, chill." Spiderman added "Alice saved Princess Shuri, she's a good person."

"One good deed doesn't make up for a lifetime of mistakes." Brawn stood his ground.

"But isn't just one good deed, Alice has put her life on the line so many times for the mammals of Zootopia!" Scarlet argued, squaring up to the much taller hero "She's been shot, stabbed, tortured, she lost her arm for god's sake!...I used to hate her, despise her even but she's proved time and time again that there is good in her soul and that she loves my big sister. So you can be an asshole and judge her for what she used to be but guess what? Your opinion doesn't matter, all that matters is that her team trusts her and that her family loves her."

"Robyn." Alice spoke, teary eyed and touched by the words with Luna matching her expression.

"Don't go soppy on me now, you two." Scarlet grinned at the couple.

"…I'm sorry, Alice." Brawn apologised, looking sheepish.

"It's a miracle, the jerk knows the word 'Sorry'." Iron Heart grumbled.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Brawn groused at the heroine.

"You know what I mean." Iron Heart fired back.

"Ok you two, cool it." Wasp eased.

"No don't cool it, I love to see romantic teen drama, this better than shit they show on the CW." Deadpool chortled.

"Romantic? W-we're not a couple!" Iron Heart denied.

"Really?" Roar reacted, surprised "You two just seem so close."

"We're not dating!" Brawn enforced.

"But you guys wanna', don't ya'?" Deadpool teased the flustered teens.

Iron Heart aimed one of her repulse cannons at Deadpool and simmered "Another word out of you and I'll sew that mouth shut."

"They tried that with Ryan Reynolds once, the fans hated it." Deadpool replied.

"Who's Ryan Reynolds?" Snowguard mumbled.

"Can we get back to the matter at hand?" Olivia spoke up, she was sitting on Kodi's shoulder with her mech on sentry mode in the corner "Now SHIELD obviously knows about the human Luna and Alice and most likely there are other human versions of the rest of the team, the question is why did they keep it secret in the first place."

"Probably because they assumed our Luna and Alice were villains also." Bullet guessed.

"We can question Hill and Coulson about it when they get here." Mage added.

"Well if they're on the way here, I'm going to make myself scarce." Deadpool said, before downing the remainder of his coffee.

"You think you can just walk out of here?" Ms Marvel asked "You tried to kill Alice and broke into a SHIELD safehouse."

"Oh come on I didn't kill anyone and besides I used my best tranquilizers on the SHIELD agents out in the hallway." Deadpool tried to persuade, pulling down his mask.

Ms Marvel was about to counter when Alice interrupted "Ms Marvel, I respect your position as leader of the Champions but I believe Deadpool to be an honourable warrior."

"Honourable? Him?" Ms Marvel half laughed.

"The fact that he only knocked out the agents has to count for something and when he found out I was pregnant he laid down his weapons, a warrior without honour wouldn't do such a thing." Alice bargained.

"Aww, thank you." Deadpool smiled under his mask "I like the bunny version of you a million times more than the human bitch version of you."

Ms Marvel contemplated Alice's reasoning for a moment before saying "If say Deadpool dropped a flash grenade and escaped, I don't think The Champions would catch him."

" _Merci_ Ms Marvel." Alice smiled, ignoring the disgusted look on Brawn's face.

"Well this crossover has been fun but it's time for me to skedaddle," Deadpool sighed, standing up "but I'm sure we'll meet again…especially since Disney now owns both Marvel and Fox."

"What?" Spiderman asked, once again confused by Deadpool's words.

"Bye!" Deadpool sang before throwing down a flash grenade without warning.

Everyone covered their eyes and hissed in annoyance at the merc, when the light faded and everyone could see again Ms Marvel groaned "I hate that guy."

"At least he's not annoying as Gwen Pool." Wasp sighed.

Thirty minutes later Director Hill, Agent Coulson and an entourage of SHIELD agents had arrived at the apartment and were swarming the crime scene. "What do you mean Deadpool escaped!?" Maria barked, getting in Ms Marvel's face.

"It all happened so fast, one second we were talking and the next he dropped a flash bang." Ms Marvel lied.

"There's fourteen super heroes in this room and not one of you could catch him?" Maria simmered with anger.

"Well maybe if you had control of your agents this wouldn't have happened." Olivia threw in, still sat on Kodi's shoulder.

"Excuse me?" Maria nearly snarled.

"The only reason Deadpool knew Alice was here was because you have an informant in your ranks and as for your so called safe house, this place was easily infiltrated by one man." Olivia pointed out.

"My wife and our unborn children were nearly killed, you promised us protection and you can't even provide that." Andraste growled at the SHIELD director, with Alice hugging onto Luna's arm.

"…I assure you we'll find the corrupt agent and punish them and we'll double the defences here." Maria conceded.

"Good, now that's taken care of let's address the secrets you've been keeping." Andraste accused.

"Secrets?" Maria reacted, caught off guard.

"Deadpool came here to kill Alice Wilde, turns out there is more than one, but you already knew that didn't you?" Andraste asked with venom.

"God damn it," Maria sighed "fine I was keeping you in the dark."

"Well we want to know about your earth's versions of us, absolutely everything." Alice insisted.

Maria knew the mammals wouldn't back down on this, she looked around before saying to Luna and Alice "Let's go to your room and discuss this." Luna and Alice then lead Maria to their bedroom while the Champions and the rest of Team Ceartais looked on as SHIELD agents fixed up the shot up apartment.

Scarlet was contemplating eavesdropping on Alice and Luna's conversation with Maria when Coulson came up to her and simply said "Scarlet."

Scarlet looked up at Coulson and said in a disappointed voice "You knew about the human versions of Luna and Alice."

"Yes, I'm sorry for not telling you." Coulson apologised sincerely.

"Why, Coulson? I thought you were on our side." Scarlet replied.

"I have my orders…but let me make it up to you." Coulson offered.

"How?" Scarlet asked dubiously.

"Grab Bullet and get in my car, there's someone I think you should meet." Coulson smiled, putting on his sunglasses.

000

The passage of time between dimensions is complicated to say the least, a day and a half had passed in the human dimension yet back in Zootopia less than an hour had passed since Team Ceartais had stepped through the rift. Nick and Judy kissed and bid farewell to each other as they went to their places of work but as Nick was been driven to city hall by his bodyguard Ben, he got an unexpected phone call from his best friend Jack, telling him to head to a crime scene in Sahara Square when Nick tried to question the buck rabbit about it he only answered that it was urgent that he see this crime scene.

Ben pulled up at what looked like a three storey office building, not far from the Sapphire Quarter part of Sahara Square, there was MCB vehicles everywhere and agents milling around. Nick spotted a tired looking Jack Savage chatting to a wolverine near the front door of the building "Wait here Ben, I'll be with Jack." Nick instructed his bodyguard.

"Vey well, sir." Ben replied as Nick got out of the car.

Nick walked over to Jack and didn't bother with a greeting, he just said "We were literally in the same room together fifty minutes ago, you couldn't have told me about this then?"

"I didn't know about this then, one of my agents text me the pictures of the crime scene just as me and Skye were heading to work." Jack informed, the rabbit was holding a white coffee mug, Nick assumed he had gotten it from within the building

"Look I'm all for hanging out with my best friend but I was thinking maybe a bugga burger joint was a nice place to chat instead of a crime scene." Nick joked.

"Trust me, you'll want to see this." Jack stated, walking into the building with Nick following.

"What is this place?" Nick asked, looking around and finding it strange there were no ZPD officers around.

"After the Wave destroyed the last MCB evidence lock up we needed a more secure one, this is it. Anyway the janitor comes in to clean the place this morning and finds three bodies in one of the hallways." Jack explained, seeming troubled.

"…You doing ok?" Nick asked, concerned for his friend.

"Just a lot on my mind." Jack admitted "I'm worried about the girls on their mission, I'm worried about how Rojek is handling the situation and this crime scene just adds to my problems."

"Look the girls will be fine, they've got each other's backs." Nick reassured despite being worried himself "How is Aleks?"

"He's a mess, anyone would be in his situation." Jack told, walking up a staircase "Me and Skye have offered to look after the twins until the team rescue Zoe, he took us up on the offer."

"Is he off work?" Nick queried, following Jack up the stairs.

"Skye ordered him to take some time off, but you know Aleks, the fox can't sit still. I wouldn't be surprised if he was at desk right now." Jack huffed, walking onto the next floor and out into the hallway where forensic scientists and MCB agents were crowded around three dead mammals laid on the floor.

"This is one part of being a cop I don't miss." Nick grimaced, the unique smell of death filled the corridor indicating these mammals had been dead for at least six hours.

"Let me give you the abridged version, the two bodies closest to us were two rookie MCB agents guarding this lock up. Security cameras were disabled around 1 am, these two go and investigate to find one of the doors opened and some evidence removed." Jack began, pointing at heavy metal door that was ajar.

"What was taken?" Nick asked.

"Fifty pounds of refined night howler." Jack revealed.

"Night howler? Someone making Morrigan again?" Nick asked, fearing the addictive steroid was out in Zootopia's streets again.

"I'm not sure, anyway the thief is discovered and kills the agents." Jack lamented.

"Gunshot wounds?" Nick guessed.

"No." Jack answered before pointing at the wall "They were killed by one of those."

Nick looked to where Jack was pointing a felt his fur stand on end, there was an arrow in the wall and no ordinary arrow, the sharp head had a unique design that Nick had seen before "No…that's impossible."

"That's why I called you, as soon as I saw that arrowhead's shape I knew it was a Loxley design." Jack said.

"But the only mammals who have ever used Loxley arrows were my Dad and Luna." Nick whispered with fear, subconsciously and stupidly yanking the arrow out of the wall and looking at it.

"Well the arrow is far to big to have been fired by a fox, it's from a bow that's made for a much bigger mammal. The question is; why would the killer use your father's arrowhead design?" Jack asked, ruling out Luna's involvement while mentally cursing Nick for tampering with evidence, that one action by his friend just landed him with a lot of paperwork.

"To send a message? To try and frame Andraste?" Nick guessed, now worried for his eldest child.

"Well whoever it was is a crack shot, each of the agents got an arrow through the eye and into their brain, instant death." Jack told, looking over at the corpses of the young agents.

"But the killer isn't perfect, this shot missed." Nick stated, holding up the bloody arrow in his paw.

"That's another part of this thing that doesn't make sense, it's to do with the third victim." Jack said, walking over and standing above the dead body of a male badger with multiple arrows sticking out of his body.

"Holy crap, this is overkill." Nick gasped, looking at the heavily damaged corpse.

"Wait until you hear the details; so it looks like this badger was brought here by the killer, with his wrists tied and made to watch while the murderer killed the agents. Then once they were dead, the killer cuts the badger free and he runs. There are arrows all over this floor, in the offices, the break room and even the bathrooms." Jack told.

"The killer was hunting the badger?...They wanted him to suffer before he died." Nick realised, his blood running cold "Why?"

"No idea, but when the badger wound up back here the killer decided to end it, shooting arrow after arrow into the poor bastard. I can't figure this crime out, it doesn't make any sense. I've phoned Judy and asked if we can borrow Basil Dawson to have a look at this crime." Jack said, supping his coffee.

"That's a good idea, Basil can figure out the toughest crime scenes." Nick commented "Have we got an ID on this badger?"

"He's some kind of professor that works at a community college, he was reported missing a few days ago." Jack informed, getting out his phone so he could look up the victim's name "Dr. Reed Richards."

000

Crossbones knew how to blend into a crowd when he wasn't garbed in his mission gear, he was born and raised in New York and knew all the dives and cheap hotels to hide out in. He was confident that he could hide from SHIELD, The Champions and any other hero that came searching for him but he knew he couldn't hide from the people who gave him the contract to kill Princess Shuri. Sooner or later they would find him and he knew he wouldn't emerge victorious, so he reached out and phoned the contact. Crossbones was given a location to meet up, it was in Chinatown in a small apartment above a traditional medicine shop. He made his way to the address, mask less and in civilian clothes, he walked around to the back of the shop and up the metal staircase to the apartment. Crossbones was hesitant about entering the apartment, he knew what waited within, there was a fifty percent chance he'd be killed if he walked in there but he also knew there was a hundred percent chance of death if he didn't. Crossbones let out a tired breath before knocking the door "It's open." A voice lulled from the other side.

Crossbones couldn't believe he felt scared as he opened the door to the studio apartment, he walked in and saw a white woman in her late twenties smiling devilishly at him, she had long ginger hair that was braided, her toned muscled body was covered by a simple tank top and a pair of yoga pants and her strange amber eyes were locked on Crossbones "Hey there, Brock." She grinned as Crossbones shut the door behind him

"Hey Andi." Crossbones replied, trying to remain calm "Where's your missus?"

"Right here." A voice whispered in Crossbones' ear, the assassin then felt the cold steel of a shuriken press against his throat.

"I'll never figure out how you do that, Ronin." Crossbones spoke, knowing one wrong move or word would end his life.

The woman with a shuriken at Crossbone's throat was bi racial, half eastern Asian and half Caucasian, her hair was dyed snow white and her odd golden coloured eyes were watching for any sudden movements from the mercenary "Our employer is disappointed that you failed your contract, Monsieur Rumlow." Ronin hissed like a viper.

"I figured that." Crossbones replied "There was an unexpected development at the UN."

"Oh you mean the champions?" Andi scoffed "The kiddy version of The Avengers."

"They showed up just as the target was coming into sight." Crossbones added.

"You had two other snipers with you, how did you all miss?" Ronin smouldered.

"The Champions had other heroes with them, one of them threw a smoke bomb at the podium before rushing the Princess back in the building." Crossbones explained, feeling himself starting to sweat.

"I never had you down as the type to make excuses." Ronin barbed.

"Look if you're going to kill me, just do it, I'm not in the mood to be toyed with." Crossbones said.

"Oooh, Brocky's got some balls on him." Andi giggled before saying to Ronin "Alice sweetie, let the poor brute go."

Ronin obeyed and removed the shuriken from Crossbones' throat "Lucky for you, our employer has granted you a chance to redeem yourself." Ronin informed.

"Tell your boss I appreciate it." Crossbones replied "So what's my next mission?"

"We'll talk about it over some take out," Andi glossed over "but I want to know is how did you escape The Champions?"

"It wasn't easy, the new Spiderman and some weird ginger bunny were on my tail." Crossbones informed.

Suddenly Andi's expression grew serious as did Ronin's "Did you say a bunny?" she demanded.

"Uh, yeah, it looked weird now, it had sharp teeth like a dog or something." Crossbones answered awkwardly, wondering why Andi and Ronin looked so spooked.

" _Merde."_ Ronin cursed "We need to tell the boss, he'll want to know about this."

(AN/ Marvel versions of Alice and Luna!? Who are they working for!? What does Coulson want to show Robyn and Hannah?! What did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Aleks disobeys Skye's orders, Kion tries to give some advice, Robyn gets spooked again and Luna tries to keep her fears at bay. Please review and c ya soon...)


	16. Photographs

(AN/ Hey folks it's garouge/crewefox here with another chapter of the Broken Mirror, as always thank you to everyone who continues to support this story with their reviews, faves, follows, rebloggs and likes. So without further ado, let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 15 – Photographs.**

December was usually a happy time in Zootopia, mammals frequented Tundra Town a lot more often because it felt festive, folks were preparing for holiday celebrations and there was just a buzz of excitement from the smallest mouse to the largest elephant.

But there was a mammal who didn't care for the holiday season; her name was Lylla Mantlo. Lylla was a 37 year old North American river otter and was second in command of the Major Crime Bureau's 'Powers Taskforce', the otter plodded through the office with her morning mocha trying to hide her irked expression at the Christmas and Hanukah decorations on her colleagues' desks. Lylla knew she shouldn't be annoyed at her colleagues but she couldn't help it, she hated the holidays, so much so she had offered to work double shifts over the holidays for the last five years. In her mind, if she worked the holidays she wouldn't miss the thing she used to love the most about them, she sat down at her desk and came face to face with her main issue with the holidays; a photo of her dead husband. In the photo was a half drunk raccoon caught mid laugh while a happy looking Lylla hugged him lovingly, the photo was taken several years ago at a friends' new year's eve party, the raccoon was Rick Mantlo but everyone called him 'Rocket'. Rocket had been one of the MCB's quartermasters, in charge of the armoury and maintaining all guns and explosives at the Zootopia regional office. Six years ago when the radical terrorists known as 'The Drowned' were laying siege to Zootopia a small band of fanatics attacked a MCB truck transporting seized explosives, Rocket had been driving that truck, he killed three of the terrorists while trying to defend the truck but was shot in the gut, the bullet had hit one of his kidneys and he died before the ambulance could arrive.

When it happened Lylla was overwhelmed with grief, she took six months off work to try and process her pain, attended grief counselling and tried to rebuild her life after losing her beloved. During the six month break Christmas came along like it always does, out of habit she got the decorations from the attic but before she could hang up a single one she just stopped in her tracks, Rocket had always loved the holidays, every year he'd go all out and cover their house in bright lights and tacky ornaments, wear the ugliest Christmas sweaters and watch holiday specials on the tv like an enchanted child. Lylla realised at that moment the holidays would never be the same again, nothing would ever come close to those precious moments she shared with Rocket and so she never tried, since his death she had never put up a tree, bought presents or sent a Christmas card, it was her belief that she would only celebrate the holidays again when she had passed on and reunited with Rocket. "I miss you, handsome." Lylla smiled, blowing a kiss at the photo before turning her computer on.

"Morning." A gruff and tired voice greeted, as a figure swooped by her desk.

"You've got to be kidding me." Lylla gave a low growl, knowing exactly who the figure was, she got out of her seat with her mocha in hand and marched after the figure who had just entered his personal office "What the hell are you doing here, Aleks?"

Aleks had his back to his subordinate, the silver fox was rummaging through a stack of files on his desk "You know it's customary to say 'Good morning' back?" he tutted.

"District director Savage told you to take some time off, if she finds out you're here she's going to pissed." Lylla stated, worried for her friend.

"Skye's got her hands full babysitting the twins besides I'm more use here than I am at home." Aleks replied curtly, still facing away from Lylla.

"Aleks…" Lylla sighed, taking a sip of her drink before saying "No offence but you're going to be god damn useless until Zoe comes back."

Aleks stopped rifling through the files on his desk and whispered "But what if she doesn't."

Lylla could see Aleks' shoulders trembling, like he was about to burst out crying any moment, instinctively Lylla shut the door to office and pulled down the blinds so the other agents wouldn't see "Stop talking like that, Team Ceartais is going to rescue her." She assured.

Aleks finally turned to face Lylla, the usually prim and proper fox looked scruffy and unkept, behind his glasses there were bloodshot eyes likely caused by a combination of crying and alcohol consumed the night before "How can you know that for certain? She could be dead in a ditch on the other side of that cloud." Aleks lamented, glancing at a photo on his desk of him, Zoe and the twins.

"Because there is still the possibility that she's alive, there is always that hope." Lylla enforced "You can't give up on her, Zoe is tougher that the both of us, she has been through shit we can't even fathom so don't you dare give up on her, you hear me?"

"I hear you…but's it hard not to think of the worst case scenario." Aleks confided, picking up the photo and tracing his fingers over Zoe's face.

"And you're not going to be thinking clearly if you're here," Lylla piled on "look go home, get some sleep and after work I'll call round to check on you."

"Lylla you don't have to do that." Aleks said, avoiding eye contact with the otter.

"No I don't, but that's what friends do for each other." Lylla gave a sympathetic smile.

Aleks looked like he was about to submit to Lylla's will and head back home but the vibrating buzz of his smartphone distracted him, he retrieved it from his pocket and answered in a tired voice "Agent Rojek, Powers Taskforce."

" _Oh, uh, hi Agent Rojek, I'm Retsuko, the red panda you met at the ER the other night."_ An awkward voice came down the line.

Aleks instantly remembered the mammal that Andraste had talked out of suicide, she had been put on suicide watch at Savanah Central general hospital "Yes, of course I remember you Retsuko, how can I help you?" Aleks replied in a civil manner, despite being physically and emotionally exhausted.

" _Well it's not to help me…look this is going to sound strange but me and boyfriend Haida saw something weird last night and we didn't know who else to call."_ Retsuko hastily explained, sounding freaked out.

"Weird, how?" Aleks asked, detecting how jumpy the red panda sounded.

" _Well we were in my hospital room last night when I heard a scream come from outside, Haida ran to the window to see what was happening when he saw a giraffe being chased across the parking lot."_ Retsuko continued.

"Did you call the hospital's security?" Aleks queried, growing more interested.

" _Of course, but they laughed at us when we said what chasing the giraffe."_ Retsuko said, sounding embarrassed and sad at the same time.

"What was chasing her?" Aleks pressed.

" _You're going to think we're crazy but some kind of monster, it had whitish pink skin and loads of ginger fur on its head, it was firing a bow and arrow."_ Retsuko revealed.

"A bow and arrow?" Aleks gawped, remembering the morning report about the multiple homicides with arrows at the MCB evidence lock up.

" _It's dumb, I know."_ Retsuko added.

"No, no it's not. We'll be right over." Aleks insisted before hanging up and saying to Lylla "Get the car, we're heading to the hospital that red panda's at."

"What happened to going home? You know Skye will have your tail for this?" Lylla reacted, clearly frustrated.

"I think a possible serial killer case might be a more pressing matter right now." Aleks replied, hoping a case would keep his from his dark thoughts.

000

Alice and Luna were sat on the edge of the bed in their assigned bedroom while Maria pulled over a chair from the corner so she could take a seat "You have to understand that the only reason we kept your human counterparts a secret was because we weren't a 100% sure what side of the law you were on, you could have been easily been criminals posing as heroes." Maria explained, as she switched on the tablet in her hands.

"Seriously? My wife saving a princess didn't convince you?" Luna blustered, crossing her arms.

"Luna, relax." Alice soothed her hot tempered love.

Maria was unfazed by Luna's snarky comment and continued "I'm not going to lie, your human counterparts are the scum of the earth, they are the type of assassins that'll do anything for money and don't care about civillians caught in the crossfire. Political assassinations, wiping out entire families, honey trapping, killing kids, you name it these two have done it."

"They lack a code." Alice mused, when she had been a hired sword she stuck to very stringent guidelines when it came to contracts, she now wondered why this earth's Alice lacked a code.

"We'll start with Ronin." Maria began, swiping a few buttons on her tablet "Now Ronin is a common codename on this earth with several people holding onto the name at some point, but there is only one who tops SHIELD's most wanted mercenary list. Her early life details are sketchy but we know Ronin was born in France with a French mother and a Japanese father but at some point in her childhood Ronin was recruited into 'The Hand'."

"What is 'The Hand'?" Luna questioned.

"A secret organisation that originates from Asia, they try to influence politics, business and society from the shadows. Their main fighting force is a ninja clan, where Ronin learned her skills. Anyway when she was a teen her guardian, codenamed Oni, was killed due to a conflict within the clan, Ronin murdered the people responsible before fleeing The Hand." Maria explained, reading Ronin's file.

"Sayame." Alice sighed, hating that her master and her mother figure was dead in this universe as well.

"Does this sound familiar?" Maria quizzed, noticing Alice's reaction.

"I was never part of any group called 'The Hand', but I was enslaved by a Yakuza clan during childhood and my teacher was a leopard called Oni. This was years before I came to America and became a hero." Alice explained, envisioning her old master's face.

"Well Ronin didn't become a hero," Maria replied, showing the couple a photo on her tablet of a white haired woman dressed in Alice's old black mission outfit from before she became Yurei "we believe Ronin to be responsible for over eight hundred deaths, she is currently wanted by over a dozen governments and if she is caught by us she will most likely receive the death penalty."

"That's me?" Alice whispered, spooked out by the photograph "She looks so strange but so familiar."

"You ok?" Luna asked, stroking the fur atop Alice's head.

"I'm fine, just a little freaked out that's all." Alice admitted.

"Andraste's history is a little more complicated." Maria redirected the conversation, not wanting the couple to dwell on these revelations

"Let me guess," Luna cut in "highly intelligent daughter of a millionaire banker, her rich mom dies when she's a kid, goes to live with her dad and step mom, has a happy childhood but instead of growing up to be a surgeon like I did she becomes an assassin?"

Maria seemed a little impressed but corrected "Actually she did become a surgeon and a hero."

"She did?" Luna reacted, a little shocked.

"Yeah she was a low level heroine in California, specialized in taking down gangsters and white collar criminals but after a couple of years in the job she began to change." Maria informed, bringing up Andraste's file on her tablet.

"Change how?" Luna asked, sounding wary.

"Andraste was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, her mind was split between two distinct personalities; the kind and caring Dr. Luna Wilde and the violent sociopath she referred to as Andi." Maria told, noticing the dread grow on Luna's face with each passing word.

"Oh god…" Luna uttered, feeling her paw pads beginning to sweat.

"Luna." Alice simply said, taking hold of the vixen's paw.

"You have D.I.D too, don't you?" Maria guessed.

"Yes…but my Andi hasn't shown up in years, I control it with meds and therapy." Luna revealed "…So what made her snap? There had to be a event that made her turn from hero to criminal?"

"We don't know all the details but we think it had something to do with the murder of this universe's Olivia Dawson and her family." Maria answered, knowing this answer would just cause more stress.

"This earth's Olivia is dead!?" Luna gasped before whispering "That would definitely make Andi angry."

"So how did the other version of us meet?" Alice asked, itching for details.

"Andraste knew she couldn't take out the Dawson's killers alone, so she sought out an assassin and found Ronin. Soon after that the two started doing contracts together and around six months later they got married at a chapel in las vegas." Maria answered while showing a grainy cctv image of the human couple at a chapel, Luna looked at her human self and shuddered, it felt disturbing to look upon another version of herself. "Their mutations actually make them efficient killers." Maria added.

"Mutations? You've mentioned mutants before, what does that mean?" Alice enquired.

"A very small percentage of the human population are born with something called the X gene, during puberty the X gene activates and powers manifest, some are major and other are subtle." Maria gave the basic explanation "The human Alice's mutation is that she can see gases."

"How would that make her a better killer?" Alice asked further.

"Because she can look through bodies and see the oxygen in someone's lungs and the carbon dioxide they breath out, it makes her an excellent tracker. The only physical difference is her golden coloured eyes, human eyes don't come in that colour." Maria answered.

"I know I'm not going to like the answer, but what is Andi's mutation?" Luna asked cautiously.

"I don't have a proper label for it but basically all her senses are heightened when it comes to blood; she can smell a flesh wound from over a mile away, her eyes can see the smallest of blood splatters and there are reports that when she causes someone to bleed she goes into a sort of crazed frenzy, like a huge boost of adrenaline her." Maria told, her memory flashing back to a crime scene where Andraste had gone crazy.

"Thank you for telling us, Director Hill." Luna thanked formally, despite her mixed emotions on this information.

Maria nodded in reply, stood up and headed for the door but before she opened it she turned back and said "You're not like them, I hate to admit it but you are good people, sorry, I mean mammals."

" _Merci."_ Alice responded, Maria gave a sympathetic smile before leaving the room.

As the door closed, Luna let out a tired sigh and groaned "Well that sucked, I wanted to get some answers but now that I've got them, I don't want them."

"This universe is a very dark place." Alice agreed, remembering the history articles she had read earlier in the day "But we're not part of that darkness."

"But we could have been, I used to lose control of Andi all the time." Luna pointed out, mentally reminding herself that she took her meds today.

"Luna, look at me." Alice willed, touching Luna's chin and guiding her face so she could look in her amber eyes "I fell in love with you, not Andi. When we first met I was bewitched by your beauty and I knew that you had been tainted by darkness like me but we overcame our darkness, we climbed out of that hell and now we live and love in the light."

Luna was touched by the words but couldn't help but worry out loud "But what if I lose control of my D.I.D, what if I get triggered and I hurt someone?"

"I'll be there to guide you back and soon enough we'll have five little helpers to guide you, too." Alice smiled reassuringly, placing Luna's paw on her tummy.

Luna finally cracked a smile and replied "I guess I'll be too busy to worry about Andi."

"I know this situation isn't ideal but we haven't talked about the babies since we found out I'm pregnant." Alice said, her voice blissful.

"That's my bad, I've been so worried about keeping you safe that I never celebrated." Luna replied, snuggling into Alice's neck and softly kissed her.

"I'm sure the kits will forgive you, you're being a super hero." Alice assured, reciprocating the kisses.

"But I want to be a parent first…I just wish we were back in Zootopia; we should be decorating the nursery, going to prenatal classes and picking names." Luna longed.

"Well painting the nursery and going to the classes might be difficult but nothing's stopping us talking about names for the babies." Alice said.

Luna's smile grew bigger at this suggestion, she moved her face down to Alice's tummy and said "So what do you angels want to be called?"

"Are you talking to them?" Alice chuckled.

"Well seeing as it their names, I think they should have an opinion." Luna jested before pressing her ear to Alice's abdomen and kidded "Wait, what was that? One of you wants to be called Victoria?"

"Victoria, huh?" Alice played along "I could've sworn one of them said Sayame."

"That name, that was Oni's name wasn't it?" Luna asked, sitting up once again.

"I can't remember my birth mother but Sayame was the closest thing I ever had to a mother, I want to name one of them after her just like you wanting to name one of them Victoria." Alice explained.

"Ok so we got two names down, three to go." Luna smiled "But knowing our luck, they'll all be boys."

000

The SHIELD agents were given the order to leave as soon Maria came out of Alice and Luna's bedroom, some of The Champions were left in the apartment along with Kion, Kodi and Olivia. Brawn had stomped out of the apartment claiming that he needed some air and a concerned Spiderman had followed after the green nineteen year old, knowing that his friend was embarrassed after the subject of him and Riri's relationship was brought up earlier. The frustrated Riri had requested to be left alone and was out on the balcony hoping the sounds of Manhattan would drown out her thoughts. In the living room, Olivia was perched on Ms. Marvel head while Kodi brewed some fresh tea and coffee for everyone else, Snowguard was flicking through her phone, Wasp was tuning up her gadgets while Viv looked outside at Riri with a concerned look on her face and this did not go unnoticed by Kion "You doing ok, Viv?"

"I am in the situation that is commonly referred to as 'Between a rock and a hard place'." Viv answered, fiddling with the sleeves of her sweater.

Kion looked outside at Riri, then looked back at Viv and figured "You want to comfort Riri?"

"Riri wishes to be left alone yet as one of her best friends I want to help her in times of emotional distress, I feel…bad." Viv tried to explain what she was feeling, which was hard for an AI.

"You're not the only one." Wasp sighed, closing up one of her wrist blasters "Her and Brawn are both upset, at least Spiderman went after the big guy."

"So has no one ever brought up the subject of them two being a thing before?" Kodi asked, as he poured out the drinks.

"No…we didn't want to make things weird." Snowguard answered with an awkward smile.

"Well things are well and truly weird now." Ms Marvel chimed in "But it was brewing for a while."

"So has it been kinda' obvious to everyone that they like each other?" Kion queried.

"Yes." Viv confirmed.

"Riri's got such the biggest crush on Amadeus." Wasp concurred.

"It's not like Brawn been subtle either, he's always blushing around her." Ms Marvel countered.

"So yeah, they totally like one another." Snowguard summed up.

"So why hasn't either of them done anything about it?" Kodi asked, walking over with a tray of drinks.

"I wish I knew." Ms Marvel sighed, taking a cup of tea from the tray.

"So basically they just need to fuck and get it over with." Olivia suggested crassly.

"Olivia!" Kion gasped, while Kodi and Wasp sniggered.

"Ew! Please don't put that image in my head." Ms Marvel reacted.

"Oh come on, I bet Alice thought the same before you and Jasiri got together." Olivia argued to Kion.

"That's…" Kion was about to argue but then he saw the truth in Olivia's words "You're right, they are just like me and Jasiri."

"Well Jasiri's not a super hero, and neither of you are geniuses." Kodi butted in.

"I know that, but situation wise, it's the same." Kion realised "They just need a little push in the right direction."

"Ooh you're going to play matchmaker?" Wasp grinned mischievously.

"I'm just going to give them a little nudge, that's all." Kion replied, taking one of the coffees of the tray and heading towards the balcony.

"But Riri said she needed to be alone." Viv fretted.

"True but I need to apologise to her anyway." Kion brushed off before opening the door to the balcony, Riri didn't even register the lion's arrival, she looked lost in her thoughts. It was only when Kion passed her the mug and said "Brought you a coffee." That she snapped out of her daze.

"Oh, uh, thanks." Riri replied, taking the coffee.

"Look, about before, I'm sorry for making the situation more awkward." Kion bridged.

"…It's ok, I know you didn't mean any harm." Riri spoke before taking a sip of her coffee.

"But the damage is done and I'm really sorry about that." Kion added sincerely.

"It was bound to come up eventually, so don't feel bad about it." Riri said, staring into her coffee cup.

"So I'm going to be an insensitive idiot right now and guess that you do have a thing for Brawn?" Kion asked, feeling dumb for not framing the question better.

Riri gave Kion a questionable look before laughing "Wow and here was me thinking we were going to dance around that question for about twenty minutes."

"So am I right?" Kion pressed.

"Yes, of course I like him." Riri caved, rolling her eyes "I liked him ever since we met, he's smart, handsome as hell and he's always got my back…but he can be the biggest jerk on the planet."

"Two super smart people meet, they're bound to clash." Kion shrugged.

"I wish that was it…but there's always something stopping me from asking him out on a date." Riri confessed.

"And that is?" Kion urged Riri to reveal.

"I wish I knew, every time I think about telling him how I feel my brain goes haywire and I freak out." Riri explained.

"Look I'm not a genius like you or Brawn but you two are always focused on saving others, so try and save yourselves for once." Kion encouraged.

"That sounded so cheesy." Riri gave a hearty giggle "But I guess there's some truth in there somewhere, thanks Kion, you've given me a lot to think about."

"Anytime." Kion replied, hoping that the engineer would find happiness.

000

It had been an hour since Clara had been taken by the cauldron's security bots and Esso was looking at the ceiling hatch with unease. She was sat in the common area where the prisoners ate their meals. Regina, Harper and Jason were sat with her while Vanessa was stood and telling off Harper "I can't believe you'd do something so reckless." Vanessa scolded.

"Look I'm sorry ok, it seemed like a good idea at the time." Harper reasoned, the stag looking like a kid being told off by a strict teacher.

"Clara was taken to solitary, we've already got Brenda in there and now we're two mammals down, how are we supposed to keep each other safe if we're not together?" Vanessa stressed, the raccoon fixing her glasses and letting out a tired breath.

"Don't blame Harper, I talked him into it." Regina defended, sounding guilty.

"Probably but I'm guessing someone else piled on more pressure." Vanessa stated, looking at Esso.

"Are you referring to me?" Esso asked dryly.

"You going to deny you persuaded Harper to go along with Clara's plan?" Vanessa questioned.

"Of course I helped Clara talk him into it, what else was I going to do?" Esso asked rhetorically.

"Yeah and I bet you got a laugh out of the whole situation." Vanessa accused with a venomous laugh

"Laugh? You think I did this to entertain myself?" Esso asked, looking at the racoon with a frustrated look.

Vanessa was about to respond but Jason interrupted her "Esso helped Clara because she wanted to help her, that's all." The young caracal appealed to Vanessa.

"Jason, sweetie, it's a little more complicated than that." Vanessa replied, hating herself for getting angry in front of the child.

"No it's not, Esso is a nice mammal, she just has a hard time showing it." Jason countered, before rifling through his hoodie pocket and producing a pudding cup "Who do you think gives me all these pudding cups? Who got me extra blankets for bed? Who lent me a phone so I could play videogames? It was all Esso."

Vanessa, Regina and Harper all looked at Esso with stunned expression, the lynx had hid her face and mumbled "Damn it kid, that was supposed to be a secret."

"Is that true Esso?" Regina asked with a small smile.

"Yeah, well…he's just a kid, this place is hell for an adult so I can't imagine what it's like for him." Esso justified, sounding defiant and not meeting the gaze of anyone else at the table.

"So why did you help Clara?" Harper asked the embarrassed feline.

"The same reason you did, I want to go home." Esso confessed, sounding sombre "I want out of this place and get back to Zootopia."

"We all want that." Vanessa sympathised.

"But we haven't done anything about it, Clara's the only one focused on getting us out of here." Esso parried.

"But what can we do? Those robots are watching us like hawks and we can't use our powers for more than a few seconds." Regina said, sounding woeful.

"That didn't stop Clara and we shouldn't let it stop us either." Esso said, finally looking at the others

"What are you saying?" Vanessa responded.

"I'm saying that when Clara gets back from solitary we're going to help her," Esso said, sounding sure of herself "because the only way we're getting out of here is together."

000

Maria Hill returned to SHIELD's New York compound straight after the Deadpool security breach at the Manhattan safehouse, which felt like a defeat to her; Deadpool had escaped and she had to reveal the truth to Alice and Luna. Maria instructed her assistant that she didn't want to be bothered with trivial matters for the rest of the day, she made her way to the scientific research suite of the compound having to pass through three security check points before she could finally reach lab number four. Labs one to three, were just that, laboratories but number four was a front, to an outside observer it looked like a lab but in fact it was a holding cell for powerful individuals. She entered the fake lab and saw the usual security unit guarding the prisoner's cell with was circular in shape with reinforced glass walls and had a small hatch for food, the glass was frosted so the prisoner could not see out. The only way Maria and Shield could see the prisoner was through the various camera feeds placed around his cell. "How is he today?" Maria asked one of her agents, this one a bald white guy in his fifties.

"Stubborn as always, keeps on trying to use his powers and we keep shocking him." The bald agent answered.

"Did you ask him the questions I prepared?" Maria quizzed, looking at the prisoner's healthy vital signs on screen.

"Of course and as always he refused to answer them, he just keeps asking us where his friends are." The bald agent informed "I'm starting to think he's being genuine, he really doesn't know what he is."

"But if there's a possibility he's lying to us it could be disastrous, we can't cut him loose." Maria said firmly.

"But you said Team Ceartais know him and they vouched for him." The bald agent argued.

"I don't care." Maria replied flatly, looking at the cctv feed and seeing a clothed blue furred wolf doing sit ups on his cell bed "Our universe's Arthur Knight was working on something that could've killed millions, if this Zootopia version of him is anything like the original then we can't chance letting him walk free."

000

Coulson didn't explain anything to Scarlet and Bullet as they drove off the island of Manhattan and into Queens, there was just a confident smile on the man's face all the way to their destination. Coulson pulled up outside an autoshop with a modest red brick house attached to it, obviously the owner of the autoshop lived in the house joined to it "Here we are." Coulson announced, turning off the engine.

"You took us to see a garage?" Bullet asked, the sound of clanking tools and the smell of engine oil clueing the blind mammal to where she was.

"This isn't any old garage, SHIELD contracts this garage to work on their special vehicles with unique components, the mechanics here are far better than the ones we've got back at the compound." Coulson explained, getting out of the car.

"But why are we here?" Scarlet asked, knowing the man was hiding something.

"Like I said, I want you to meet someone special." Coulson smiled, leading the mammals into the auto shop, a few of the mechanics gave Scarlet and Bullet quizzical looks but relaxed upon seeing Coulson. "Now where is she?" Coulson asked himself, scanning the autoshop that was packed with vehicles, but soon enough he saw a pair of skinny legs sticking out from under one of SHIELD's jeeps.

Coulson beckoned Scarlet and Bullet to follow him over to the jeep, he then called out to the mechanic under the vehicle "Hey Robbie." The name made both Scarlet and Bullet tense up, suddenly realising why Coulson had brought them here.

"Coulson? Ugh, if you're here to try and sneak in Lola for servicing I can tell ya' it ain't going to be happen, that boss of yours sent me a half dozen of these jeeps to do by next week." A very familiar voice replied, it wasn't from New York, it was a Californian accent.

"It's not like that…" Coulson began to explain as Bullet stepped closer, hardly believing how much the voice resembled her wife's.

"You always try and sweet talk me, Phil. Look your car may fly but that doesn't mean it flies to the front of the line." Robbie groused from under the jeep

"Will you just come out from under there, I want to introduce you to some friends of mine." Coulson willed.

"Tch, fine." Robbie replied before sliding out from under the jeep but soon as her sight fell on Scarlet her navy eyes bulged, shot up to her feet and pointed at the red clad heroine "It's you!" She nearly screamed

"It's you!" Scarlet gasped, looking at the ginger haired woman. She had pale skin with freckles, her slim athletic frame was covered by mechanic overalls with the SHIELD logo on the arm.

"Wait, you know each other?" Coulson asked, baffled by this revelation.

"She's the monster I've been seeing mirrors for the last six months." Scarlet rambled, pulling at her long ears in a stressed manner.

"No you're the weird bunny creature that I've been seeing in mirrors!" Robbie countered "Coulson, who is she!?"

Coulson chuckled to himself before revealing "Robyn Wilde-Savage meet Robyn Wilde-Savage."

Twenty minutes had passed by the time it took to catch up the human version of Robyn or as she commonly called 'Robbie' to the situation; what hybrids were, what Zootopia was, who was Team Ceartais, why they were in this universe and why they were working with SHIELD and the Champions. Robbie, Coulson, Scarlet and Bullet were sat in the living room of the house that was attached to the auto shop, when the story was finished Robbie leant back in her armchair and breathed "Holy shit…"

"I know right." Scarlet concurred "Pretty messed up."

"I mean you always hear of superheroes from other dimensions but I never thought a version of me could be one." Robbie smiled with disbelief "And I never would've figured they'd be animals."

"It's mammals, actually." Bullet corrected.

"Sorry, mammals…you know it's freaky that you have exactly the same voice as my Hannah." Robbie realised.

"It was a little creepy for me to hear you at first, you and my princess sound exactly the same." Bullet shared.

Robbie let out a laugh and said "My Hannah calls me princess too…you're blind too aren't you? I can tell, you move like my Hannah."

"Yes, I lost my sight in an explosion caused by an earthquake." Bullet answered, sad to learn that this earth's version of her had also lost their sight.

"Hannah lost hers in car crash, the head trauma left permanent damage on her retinas." Robbie explained before gasping "Oh crap, I need to tell Hannah about this, she'd love to meet you two! She should be picking up Aaron from school right now, I'll tell her to head straight home instead of going to the park."

"You've got Aaron in this dimension as well!?" Scarlet asked, sounding excited.

"Yeah, wait you adopted him too? Oh my god, let me go call Hannah and then you can tell me all about mammal Aaron." Robbie replied giddily before rushing out of the room to make a phone call.

Scarlet and Bullet were both smiling broadly, this had been the happiest they had felt since they arrived in this bizarre universe. Scarlet looked over at Coulson who was lounging on chair and smiled "Thank you, Coulson."

"I felt terrible about lying to you guys and I know this doesn't make up for it but I figured it might help." Coulson played down "But for the sake of civility please don't bring up human Andraste is front of Robbie, she's quite sensitive about it."

"I can't blame her, I wouldn't know what to do if I didn't have my big sister around." Scarlet empathised.

"Well you still would have your brothers." Coulson commented

Scarlet was quiet for a moment, thinking she misheard the agent "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"Your brothers? You're the only girl in a set of quadruplets, aren't you?" Coulson asked, seeing the confusion washing over Scarlet and Bullet's faces.

"My brothers are…" Scarlet began to utter but then her eyes saw a framed photograph on a book shelf in the corner, she saw Robbie flanked by three red haired men in the photo, she rushed over and grabbed the framed photo "It can't…that not's fair." She whispered, feeling tears well up in her eyes as she looked at the alternate versions of her litter mates.

Bullet hurried over and gently embraced her wife, connecting the dots and figuring out the sad truth "Princess, it's ok." She hushed

Tears began to fall onto the photograph, the happy faces of the Wilde quadruplets were both painful and beautiful for her to look at "Ryan, Ronan, Reggie…" she cried quietly.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! The Wilde boys are alive?! SHIELD has Arthur!? There's a serial killer in Zootopia!? What did you folks think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on the Broken Mirror; Scarlet learns about the brothers she never had, Aleks and Lylla track down a new lead, Team Ceartais and The Champions realise what they're up against and Clara comes face to face with the source of the rifts. Please review and c ya soon...)


	17. The Latvarian Connection

(AN/ Hey folks it's crewefox/garouge here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror, so I want a give a big thank you to everyone who liked, faved, followed, reblogged and reviewed the last update and I want to thank my amazing dev team for putting up with my dyslexia when they have to painstakingly beta these chapters. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 16- The Latverian Connection.**

"My brothers are…" Scarlet began to utter but then her eyes saw a framed photograph on a book shelf in the corner, she saw Robbie flanked by three red haired men in the photo, she rushed over and grabbed the framed photo "It can't…that not's fair." She whispered, feeling tears well up in her eyes as she looked at the alternate versions of her litter mates.

Bullet hurried over and gently embraced her wife, connecting the dots and figuring out the sad truth "Princess, it's ok." She hushed

Tears began to fall onto the photograph, the happy faces of the Wilde quadruplets were both painful and beautiful for her to look at "Ryan, Ronan, Reggie…" she cried quietly.

"Ok, Hannah's heading right back with Aaron now." Robbie happily said, strolling back into the room but when she noticed Scarlet crying and the awkward looking Coulson she mumbled "What the hell happened in the thirty seconds I was gone?"

Scarlet quickly put the photograph back on the book shelf and tried to wipe away her tears as not to worry her alternate self "I-it's nothing, just me being stupid." She rambled.

Robbie was obviously unconvinced and walked over to red furred hybrid, she knelt down to her and said kindly "Don't kid a kidder, I only cry when I'm really upset and I'm betting you're the same."

"I…I don't want to make you sad." Scarlet replied with a sniff.

"Princess, it won't hurt to tell her, she might tell you some stuff you really want to know." Bullet soothed, taking the photo off the shelf once again.

"Your Hannah's right, if I can help I will, just like you would for me." Robbie encouraged, guiding the couple back to the sofa.

Scarlet and Bullet sat back down on the sofa, fifteen seconds passed before Scarlet managed to say, "When I was born, it was just me, my brothers were stillborn."

Robbie let out a small gasp upon hearing this and a guilty look grew on Coulson's face. The human woman sat next to Scarlet and took hold of her hands and said "I'm so sorry…why did it happen? Was there a reason?"

"It's because we were hybrids, Mom's a bunny and Dad's a fox, two very differently sized mammals…Mom's body couldn't handle such big babies and so only one of us survived; me." Scarlet explained.

"Oh Robyn." Robbie empathised "Look I know this might seem weird, but do you want to know about them?"

Scarlet let out a sound that was part laugh, part sob before saying "More than anything."

Bullet passed the framed photograph to Robbie who pointed to the man of the far right of the photo; he was over six-foot-tall and his ginger hair was cut and styled short "That's Ronan, I guess you could say he's the most like Mom, he wanted to be a cop like her since we were little. He lives back in California, he works in a different precinct from Mom but they're super close."

"Let me guess, he's a goody two shoes like Mom as well?" Scarlet asked, still weeping.

"Ugh, he was such a little snitch when we were kids." Robbie revealed before pointing to the man in the middle of the photo, this guy's hair was longer and curly, and he stood with a very relaxed demeanour "That's Ryan, he's a coder for some firm in silicon valley, he's the most chilled person you'll ever meet even when his twin daughters are causing chaos."

"I have, sorry, I mean you have nieces?" Scarlet questioned with eagerness, the last of her tears were drying up.

"Yeah, he hooked up with his boss and they had Bonnie and Marian about eighteen months ago." Robbie confirmed.

Both Scarlet and Bullet smiled upon hearing the names of the baby girls, a fitting tribute to the Scarlet's grandmothers, the heroine then looked at the last man in the photo; his ginger hair was slickly styled and he wore a tailored suit and the way he smiled instantly reminded her of her father "Ok so that's Dad's smile if I ever saw one."

"I know right?" Robbie laughed "Reggie is so much like Dad it's scary, they both try act so smooth and suave, he's studying political science, so he can be a politician like Dad and the guy can talk himself out of the craziest situations."

"Sounds like Dad." Scarlet chuckled sadly.

"Ok, now I want to know something." Robbie branched, sounding uneasy "Your Luna, is she still…herself?"

Scarlet was a little hesitant but answered honestly "Luna has had mental health problems, but she's got it under control with meds and regular therapy, she's actually back in Manhattan at the safe house."

"That's…that's good." Robbie replied, struggling to figure out how she felt about this information "Isn't it ironic? In your universe you lost the boys and in mine I lost my big sister…talk about a gut punch."

"But your Luna's still alive, if it's Andi that's the problem maybe therapy-" Scarlet began.

"My Lu is dead," Robbie interrupted "ain't no therapy or drugs on this planet that's bringing her back, that thing, that 'Andi' is not my sister…I have to know, does Ronin exist in your world?"

"Well, yeah." Scarlet shrugged.

"Argh, that bitch! I hate that evil white-haired psycho, she's the one that encouraged Andi." Robbie seethed "Did she try and do the same to your Lu?"

"Um, no…Alice isn't Ronin anymore, she's actually a heroine like Luna, they're married and about to be parents." Scarlet answered, now knowing what her angry side looked like.

"You're shitting me?" Robbie gawped.

"No, it's true." Bullet confirmed "Alice fell in love with Luna and gave up her life of crime."

"God damn it." Robbie uttered, wishing things had worked out like that in her universe.

"Sorry for bringing up a sore subject." Scarlet apologised, noticing that Robbie played with her hair the same way she played with long ears when she was stressed.

"No, don't be. I'm the one who asked." Robbie waved off.

The sound of the front door opening caught everyone's attention and the sound of familiar voice greeting "Princess, we're home, what's this surprise you have for us?"

"Ready to meet yourself?" Scarlet whispered to Bullet.

"I guess, I just wish I could see her." Bullet uttered back, already smelling the unmistakable scent of her own perfume on the figure in the hallway.

"Mommy!" A happy voice cheered before a young boy raced into the living room and into Robbie's waiting arms, even though he was only five he was nearly as tall as Scarlet and Bullet, he had thick brown hair and wore the biggest grin possible.

"Hey there, little man." Robbie smiled, hugging her son and kissing her cheek.

Aaron's gaze fell upon the anthropomorphic mammals and his brown eyes grew wide with wonder "Whoa, a bunny and a fox!"

"Actually, these ladies are hybrids." Robbie corrected, noticing the happy and curious looks of Scarlet and Bullet as they looked at the human Aaron.

"I'm sorry, what's this about a bunny and fox?" A puzzled voice queried, the woman then walked into the living room with a cane in her hand, she was taller than Robbie and was more lithe than her wife's muscular build, she had long blonde hair and her eyes were a pale blue colour that matched the dress she was wearing.

"Babe come say hi to us." Robbie grinned.

It took ten minutes to catch the human versions of Hannah and Aaron up on the bizarre circumstances of this visit, after it was all explained Aaron asked excitedly "So I'm a koala with super powers where you guys are from!?"

"That's right, he's our little hero, we're officially adopting him within a couple of weeks." Bullet explained.

"This is so strange." Hannah expressed her disbelief "It sounds like the plot of some sci fi show."

"Welcome to our daily lives, things have never been normal for us since we got out powers." Scarlet replied.

"I'm still finding it perplexing, I mean sentient mammals that live in peace, I could do a piece on it for my radio show." Hannah spoke her thoughts "I wonder what my dad will think of his alternate version being a rabbit, I mean he's much shorter than my Mom but that'll hurt his ego."

"You're a radio host too?" Bullet asked, happy that they shared the same career.

"It's why we moved to New York from California, I work for the Daily Bugle radio station." Hannah confirmed before shifting the conversation "Pardon me Hannah but can I touch your face? I want to know what you look like."

"Of course," Bullet agreed, walking over "as long as I can do the same."

As the friendly chat between the interdimensional friends carried on, Coulson was in the corner reading a text on his phone. It was from Director Hill; _**Bring Scarlet and Bullet to SHIELD Compound, The Tinkerer identified the robots as Latvarian technology -MH.**_ Coulson felt a chill run down his spine upon reading this, if the robots were Latvarian it only meant one thing "Doom." He whispered.

000

Lylla was doing her best to ignore the cheesy Christmas music coming from the radio at the nurse's station, even at Savannah Central General Hospital it was impossible for the otter to escape the holidays. She glanced over to the window of the private room to see Aleks peering out of it with a set of pocket binoculars as if trying to figure what had transpired while she questioned Retsuko and Haida "So the security guards just ignored you?" Lylla queried, as she jotted down notes in a pocketbook.

"Yeah, one of the jerks sniggered at us…guess they didn't believe a mental health patient." Retsuko lamented, the red panda was dressed in cute set of pyjamas and sat up in her hospital bed with her hyena boyfriend sat on the edge of bed holding her paw.

"I'm not even a patient here and they didn't even believe me." Haida huffed, the hyena spoke with a Japanese accent like his lover, there was a bandage around his head from Retsuko's accidental use of her powers a few nights previous.

"We'll make sure to report them to their superiors, you may be in here for mental health issues but that doesn't mean you should be ignored." Lylla promised "Now can you describe the giraffe you saw fleeing?"

"Well she's was female, I could tell by her horns, she was wearing some sort of veterans jacket." Haida remembered.

"Veterans jacket?" Lylla repeated, wanting the hyena to elaborate.

"I couldn't see it clearly because it was dark, but I saw the American flag on it and I think it said 'Air Force' somewhere on it." Haida explained.

"This hospital runs a support group for veterans, maybe she had just come out of meeting." Aleks said out of nowhere, still looking through his binoculars.

Lylla was about to ask how he knew such a detail but then remembered that Zoe was a soldier, the fox had probably learnt this from his missing wife. The otter returned her attention back to the couple and asked, "So what was this creature chasing her?"

"I've never seen anything like it," Haida shuddered, clearly spooked "it had pinkish pale skin with only ginger fur coming from the top of it's head, it was about the size of a wolf, but it had no tail and the shape of it's face was just weird but I'm pretty sure it was female."

"What makes you say that?" Lylla asked further.

"She had boobs." Retsuko answered "The creepiest thing was the creature was in some sort of sick cosplay."

"You mean it was in a costume?" Lylla asked, sounding perplexed "What was it dressed as?"

"It was dressed up as Andraste." Retsuko revealed.

"What!?" Aleks barked, finally looking over at the red panda.

"Yeah, I thought it was odd too, but she was in her retro costume though, you know the one with the bodice and the yellow hat with the red feather in it?" Retsuko clarified, a little alarmed by the freaked out expression the silver fox was displaying.

"So we have a giraffe being shot at with arrows by a creature dressed up as Andraste." Aleks mumbled before marching out of the hospital room leaving Lylla, Retsuko and Haida flummoxed.

"Um, thank you for the information, we'll be back to collect an official statement soon." Lylla rambled before chasing after her superior, she caught up to him just as he reached the elevator "Why the hell did you run off like that?"

"Because they're telling the truth, there's some trees and long grass at the edge of the parking lot, from the looks of it the area's been disturbed recently." Aleks explained, stepping into the elevator.

"You think we might have a murder on our hands?" Lylla asked "Aleks, we're the 'Powers Division', leave the murders to the mammalcide detectives at the ZPD."

"Maybe we should but my gut's telling me this connected to the purple cloud phenomenon." Aleks replied, hoping in vain that the giraffe may still be alive.

Five minutes later the two MCB agents were scouring the small patch of woodland at the edge of the hospital and it didn't take the pair long to find the corpse of a female giraffe. She looked to be in her mid-forties and Haida was right about her wearing an US air force jacket, her long exposed neck had a dozen or so arrows imbedded in it "Those are the same design as Andraste's arrows, I've seen them before." Lylla noticed, not grossed out by the dead boy, she had seen plenty in her career.

"We can rule Andraste out, she's on the rescue mission." Aleks stated, looking at the petrified face of the dead mammal.

"You think this mysterious mammal is trying to frame Andraste?" Lylla thought out loud.

"I don't think so…this feels odd." Aleks mused, nothing about this crime made sense "Let's call this in, Jack Savage will want to see this."

"On it." Lylla agreed before fishing out her phone and calling the office.

As Lylla phoned the bureau Aleks noticed a few of the giraffe's belongings scattered in the long grass, an open wallet with an armed forced ID caught his eye and he read aloud "Colonel Carol Danvers, now why would someone want you dead?"

000

Maria Hill had contacted The Champions and Team Ceartais about the latest development from The Tinkerer and had instructed both teams to come to the SHIELD compound to discuss a strategy plan, the heroes were just waiting on Bullet and Scarlet to arrive back from their little trip with Coulson. The young heroes were all sat in the lobby of the compound's main building waiting for the last two heroes to arrive, Alice had decided to tag along seeing as this was not a dangerous mission and only a strategy meeting. "So, Hill sounded pretty serious on the phone, I'm guessing this Latverian tech has got her antsy somehow?" Olivia asked, she was sat in her Spitfire mech with the cockpit hatch open, so she could speak to everyone.

"If those robots did come from Latveria then this a bigger crisis than we first thought." Wasp commented, her trademark confidence couldn't be heard in her voice.

"Latveria? Must be a country that only exists on this earth, like Wakanda." Kion pondered aloud, certain there was no nation of that name in his world.

"Latveria itself isn't the problem, the problem is it's leader." Wasp responded, "Doctor Doom."

Luna let out a snigger and asked "Doctor Doom? Seriously?"

"His name be corny but trust us Doom is no joke, he's one of the biggest bads in this universe." Ms. Marvel said firmly.

"So why hasn't he been arrested?" Kodi asked, sensing that The Champions seemed nervous about this new information.

"Well for one it's hard to arrest someone with diplomatic protection and two his power sets are way OP." Ms Marvel answered.

"What makes him so powerful?" Alice queried, curious about the new foe.

"His mastery of technology rivals both Princess Shuri and Tony Stark, his suit is as tough as Iron Man's armour, but it's got the added boost of magic." Riri explained.

"Magic? You mean like Snowguard?" Kodi asked, motioning at the youngest member of The Champions.

"My magic is a blessing from the spirit of the north, Doctor Doom uses magic from all corners of the globe and has now qualms about performing black magic and blood rituals." Snowguard answered, feeling uneasy about possibly facing the dark sorcerer.

"So, we're facing a guy with advanced tech and evil magic…and here was me thinking this would be a simple rescue mission." Olivia sighed.

In the corner of the lobby Brawn was messing around on his phone, trying his best not to interact with the others especially Riri. The burly teen was not over his embarrassment caused by Deadpool and he was hoping that his friends would focus on the Doom revelation, so they wouldn't dwell on what was said regarding him and Riri. "So, you are doing the whole cold shoulder thing, huh?" Spiderman asked quietly.

"Miles, do me a favour and shut up. I didn't want to talk about it when you followed me, and I don't want to talk about it now." Brawn dismissed in a low volume, so the others wouldn't hear.

"Come on, big guy. It's me, we're the only dudes left on the team since Nova took a break, we've got to look out for one another." Spiderman tried to sway.

"Then be my friend and stop pestering me about it." Brawn replied flatly.

"He is being your friend by trying to get you to talk about your emotions." Viv's voice came from nowhere, she then materialised out of thin air in front of Spiderman and Brawn.

"You were eavesdropping?" Brawn tutted at Viv.

"Yes, I was and you are trying to change the subject." Viv called out "Now please, open up to us about your feelings for Riri."

"Not happening." Brawn replied, praying that Riri couldn't hear this conversation.

"Could it be you don't wish to talk to me because we kissed once, and you saw me as a potential romantic partner at one point?" Viv asked, oblivious to how awkward that made Brawn feel.

"What? No!" Brawn reacted with a hush panic "I used to have a crush on you, but I know you're still trying to figure your sexuality out."

Luckily for Brawn he was saved from further embarrassment when Coulson walked through the main entrance with Bullet and Scarlet flanking him "Sorry we're late, Director Hill has requested we hold this meeting at the armoury, so you can witness some Latverian tech first hand." Coulson said hastily, hurrying past the heroes and using his ID card to open the door to rest of the compound.

The two teams followed the SHIELD agent as he marched towards the armoury, Luna walked beside her little sister and asked, "So where did Coulson take you and Hannah?"

"To meet ourselves." Scarlet replied with a smile.

"Say what now?" Luna reacted, arching an eyebrow.

"We met the human versions of me and Hannah, it was super weird." Scarlet answered.

"Whoa, seriously? That's insane…well at least your human self was civil enough to be met, mine isn't even me, it's Andi." Luna said solemnly.

"Listen Lu, this whole situation is was big garbage fire, but we'll pull through, we always do." Scarlet encouraged the vixen.

"Thanks Robbie." Luna smiled at her baby sister "But once we're finished with this meeting I want to know everything about human you."

"Oh, there's a lot to tell, believe me." Scarlet breathed out, wondering how Luna would handle the news about the human versions of their brothers.

After a few minutes walking they came to a guarded door which was opened as soon Coulson and the heroes approached, however when the door was opened they were met with a extraordinary scene. Maria was in a shouting match with a racoon dressed in a black and orange flight suit holding onto some sort of rifle, while a nine-foot-tall tree like creature stood behind him holding a few large weapon and ammo bags. "What in the world?" Kion gawped.

"A raccoon? Finally, someone normal." Alice commented.

"Am I the only one who's noticing the big tree dude?" Kodi uttered with disbelief as the group walked forward.

"You can't take away most of my guns Hill! I need them for my mission!" The Raccoon argued.

"You know the rules Rocket, when you're on Earth you follow the rules and that means you only get have two guns of alien origin." Maria parried.

"I am Groot." The tree spoke while shrugging.

"Who's side on you on, Groot?" Rocket hissed at the tree creature.

"What kind of bounty hunting mission requires nearly fifty guns and seventeen bombs?" Maria asked forcefully.

"The kind that's super dangerous and worth millions of credits to me, my mark is wanted on sixteen planets, the Nova Corp will pay through the nose for this guy." Rocket replied "Look why don't you call Danvers? She'll vouch for me."

"Captain Marvel is on a mission with The Avengers at the moment and even if she did vouch for you I still wouldn't let you carry all those weapons." Maria stated, looking down at the mammal.

"Oh, come on Hill, how many times have me and The Guardians come and saved earth's ass? Plus, I'm always careful." Rocket tried to persuade.

"I am Groot." Groot chuckled, setting the weapon bags on the floor.

"Ok that was one time, how was I supposed to know that building wasn't structurally sound?" Rocket replied, sounding caught off guard.

While this argument was going on Bullet was taking in all the sounds of the SHIELD compound, she could sense so many bodies milling around, strange smells filled her nostrils and sounds were coming from every direction but then she heard something unexpected, a wolf howl, it was muted and there was a lot of interference but there was no mistaking it. Bullet knew the howl wasn't coming from Kodi, it could've come from a TV or radio but something about it made her curious. The gunslinger tried to focus and listen for the sound again but was snapped out of her concentration by Rocket yelling "Oh this a big steaming pile of bureaucratic shit! I'm trying to get Latveria and hunt and you're stopping me because of some stupid rule!?"

"Wait did you say Latveria?" Ms Marvel interrupted.

Rocket turned to the heroes and mumbled "The Champions? What the hell are you guys doing here?"

"I am Groot." Groot said with a friendly wave.

"Rocket, we're here chasing a Latverian connection to a case were working on." Ms Marvel explained to the hero she had only met a handful of times "Maybe we can pool our intel?"

"Maybe, but first I need to know one thing," Rocket shrugged, strolling over to Alice and asking, "how much for the arm?"

" _Excuse moi?"_ Alice replied, slightly creeped out by the raccoon.

Maria put her hand to head to try and appease the thumping headache she was suffering from and grumbled "Why can't anything be simple in this place?"

000

Clara didn't know how long she had been in the solitary cell, after she was thrown against the wall by Doom she had been drifting in and out of consciousness, she opened her eyes when she heard heavy footsteps approaching from down the corridor. The physicist fixed her glasses on her face and immediately noticed that Brenda, the donkey from the neighbouring cell was gone "W-what?" she spoke.

"If you're wondering about the donkey, she has been returned to the rest of the mammals, don't worry she hasn't attacked your little lynx friend." Doom spoke, the looming figure stood outside Clara's cell, his presence still frightened the she-wolf.

"They have names, Esso is the lynx and Brenda's the donkey." Clara responded, the itch to defy the man was strong despite feeling like crap.

"They are peasants, just like you." Doom replied, opening the door to the cell "But you could be a hero to your fellow commoners."

"Again, with your holier than though schtick? I've got to tell you, it's getting old really quickly." Claea sassed in a groggy voice, as she struggled to her feet.

"A rebellious spirit, typical scientist." Doom chuckled "Follow me, it's time to reward that curiosity of yours."

"Where's Zoe!?" Clara snapped, suddenly remembering the flying fox.

"The soldier is still loose, but it's not like she can escape, we are on a ship after all." Doom answered, walking away from the open cell down one of the narrow corridors.

"Did you forget she could fly? She'll fly to land and get help." Clara replied, walking after Doom.

Doom let out a deep and low laugh before replying "You still think we're on open water? Oh professor, Doom thought you were smarter than that."

"We're…in space?" Clara guessed, sounding confused.

"Wrong again." Doom responded, leading Clara deeper in the cauldron "Use that brain of yours."

"…the purple cloud." Clara realised "We're adrift between dimensions?"

"She finally gets it." Doom smirked under his mask.

"But that would take massive amounts of energy to keep a ship here, let alone get us back." Clara rambled, her mind bursting with questions.

"No, we have all the energy we need, Doom just needs you to keep it running, less we all die." Doom said chillingly.

"You want me to manage the cauldron's energy?" Clara scoffed, wondering why her captor would trust her with such a task.

"Yes, and Doom knows you'll accept, you want to preserve your life and the lives of your fellow peasants, so you'd do anything to keep them safe." Doom added, glancing back and loving the disgusted look on Clara's face.

"…You're one sick bastard, you know that?" Clara reacted, hating that Doom was right.

"Sticks and Stones, Professor Bloom." Doom replied, "Now let me introduce to the source of the dimensional rift." Doom opened up a bulkhead door that lead into a large room and inside, suspended from an elevated table was a exhausted humanoid figure, his skin was blue and sweaty, his hair and beard was a darker tone of his skin, his eyes were the brightest yellow and from the base of his spine was a pointed tail "Say hello to our power source, Mr. Kurt Wager, or as some people call him; Nightcrawler."

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Nightcrawler is the source of the rifts!? Who is Rocket hunting!? How will Team Ceartais and The Champions handle Doom? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on the Broken Mirror; a new hunt begins, Clara gets to know Kurt and the heroes are served a unhealthy dose of reality. Please review and c ya soon...)


	18. Luna Elise Wilde

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror, I'd like thank the awesome dev team for helping craft this latest chapter including our latest member SuperCanadianRobin. Thank you to all the lovely folks who liked, faved, followed, reblogged and reviewed the last update. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 17- Luna Elise Wilde**

"Now let me introduce to the source of the dimensional rift." Doom opened up a bulkhead door that lead into a large room and inside, suspended from an elevated table was an exhausted humanoid figure, his skin was blue and sweaty, his hair and beard was a darker tone of his skin, his eyes were the brightest yellow and from the base of his spine was a pointed tail "Say hello to our power source, Mr. Kurt Wagner, or as some people call him; Nightcrawler."

Clara felt a rush of feelings course through her, first was confusion; what was this creature? He had some mammal features but no mammal looked like him. What did Doom mean by saying he was the power source? Then came anger; Doom had imprisoned this 'Nightcrawler' like every other soul in The Cauldron but this poor creature showed signs of torture and surgical augmentation, Clara was now convinced Doom's cruelty had no bounds. And finally sympathy came; the 'Nightcrawler' looked in pain, he looked like he hadn't slept in days and most of all Clara could see despair in his face.

The she-wolf didn't notice herself stepping forward and reaching out to touch the tortured soul's face "Oh...what has he done to you?"

The blue creature was barely lucid and was whispering in a pained voice "Gegrüßetseist du, Maria, voll der Gnade, der Herr istmit dir..."

"What?" Clara spoke, stunned partly that creature could speak a mammal language and confused due to the fact that she could not speak German.

"It's German professor, this demon is praying." Doom responded, pressing a control panel on the wall so the operating table could be lowered.

"What have you done!? This mammal is clearly sentient and peaceful and you're torturing him!" Clara snapped, looking around the room to see the 'Nightcrawler' attached to different monitors and IV lines.

"He's a sacrifice to make the world safer, the pain he's enduring now will benefit generations to come." Doom justified "But it seems that he's a little stretched thin, the constant use of his powers is taking its toll on this blue devil."

"Because you're forcing him!" Clara barked before looking back at Nightcrawler.

"Wagner only stays here out of choice, he knows if he uses his mutation to leave The Cauldron every innocent on this ship we'll die, he's choosing to be a hero yet again...pathetic." Doom replied, typing a few keys on a nearby workstation checking that Nightcrawler's feeding tubes and drugs were being administered correctly. "And now you have a chance to be a hero as well, professor."

"What do you mean?" Clara asked in an icy voice, reluctant to help the tyrant.

"Wagner's mutation, or as you call it 'Power', grants him the ability to teleport himself to the shadow dimension the Cauldron is anchored in and teleport back to his own original dimension, the same one Doom hails from." Doom explained "But in order to execute Doom's grand design Wagner's powers needed to be enhanced so he could teleport objects around him as well. But Doom's most triumphant augmentation of Wagner's powers was the ability to amplify his dimensional travelling capabilities to open doors to worlds beyond imagination."

"That's how you got to Zootopia? You took a heroic mammal and tortured him, experimented on him and strapped into a machine for your sick plan!" Clara blasted.

"There was of course some teething problems, Doom tried a test breach to your dimension, the goal was to access the most populous city on yourplanet and when the city was at peak capacity, Zootopia in the 2030s was the target however due to Wagner's initial reluctance we ended up in some English village in the medieval era, that mistake resulted in some fatalities of mammals but since then Wagner has been an obedient little demon." Doom continued, caring not for the suffering the mutant was enduring.

"But why breach into Zootopia in the first place? It doesn't make any sense!" Clara threw back in vain.

"Patience, my dear." Doom dodged "You will know of Doom's plan if you solve a little problem."

"...It's not like you're giving me much of a choice." Clara said bitterly.

"There is always a choice, Professor. You can choose to help and preserve the lives of your fellow prisoners or refuse and let everyone on this ship, including Doom, perish." Doom proposed, knowing that Clara wouldn't refuse.

Clara submitted and said venomously "So what do you need me to do, you bastard?"

"The engine of this ship absorbs the powers of Wagner and stores it for use, it absorbs for twenty hours of the day before letting the demon rest for the remaining four. However the machines are absorbing are getting less and less out of Wagner with each passing day and the devil is not responding to pain stimulus like he used to." Doom informed "Doom realises that he needs more than four hours than sleep to regain his energy so it's up to you to devise a way to optimise the power absorption and use to make up for Wagner's extra rest."

"You want me to help you keep this mammal enslaved?" Clara scoffed.

"Think of it this way, you'll be saving his life, your friends' lives and your own." Doom reworded "Now are you going to help or not? Or do you not want to know why you and the others were brought aboard?"

"...If I help you, will you at least stop torturing him?" Clara bargained, looking at the weak creature who was still mumbling prayers.

"Fine." Doom accepted, before heading for the door "You'll be permitted to work in here for six hours a day and then be returned to general population. Doom suggests you get working."

"...When this is all over, I'm going to make sure you pay for this, you piece of shit." Clara vowed, looking at the vile man with distain.

"And one these days Doom's going to cut out that disrespectful tongue of yours." Doom barbed back before closing and sealing the bulkhead door behind him.

"I hate that dick." Clara huffed.

"A-are you an angel?" Kurt asked, his voice strained and croaky.

Clara turned back to the operating table to find the blue man, staring at her with tearful yellow eyes, she went over and took hold of his strange two fingered hand and smiled sympathetically "Sorry, I'm no angel, just a jewish girl from New York. You're name's Kurt, right? I'm Clara."

"Bless you, Clara...are you sure you're not a dream, or illusion?...It's just I've never met a wolf that wears glasses and can talk...are you like me? A mutant?" Kurt questioned, each word sounded hazy.

"Afraid not, just a regular she-wolf. How about you? Do all humans look like you?" Clara asked back, remembering what Doom had told her earlier in his throne room.

"No...I am unique." Kurt answered, crying with happiness upon meeting a gentle soul in this hell.

"You're a hero, you could save yourself but you choose to protect the mammals on this ship. You are really brave." Clara encouraged, getting out a handkerchief and wiping the tears away from Kurt's eyes.

"I would shame the good name of the X Men if I thought only of myself." Kurt smiled sadly.

"What's the X Men?" Clara asked, grabbing a bottle of water of a nearby desk and going back over to Kurt, she opened it and gently poured it into Kurt's extremely dry mouth.

Kurt finished the entire bottle in one go before answering "It is a long and complicated tale."

"Well things are complicated enough already, so pile it on." Clara replied "Besides I could use a story why'll I fix up these machines."

000

"Oh this is just beautiful." Rocket cackled, the racoon was lounging on a comfy leather chair in the crisis room of SHIELD HQ "You chumps take away my guns and now you want my help."

Maria had a face like thunder as she stared back at the raccoon, she had thought the mammals of Team Ceartais had been irritating but this bounty hunter was on another level of annoyance "You'd be helping save the life of kidnapped innocents."

"I ain't telling you shit until I get my guns back." Rocket replied, crossing his arms. Groot was stood behind him and seem more interested in the potted plant in the corner than engaging in the conversation.

"Why are we even indulging him?" Brawn asked aloud "His target and our objective are most likely not linked."

Team Ceartais and The Champions were dotted around the crisis room, the green teen was leaning against the wall looking restless. Olivia who was now out of her mech and chilling on Luna's shoulder looked up at Brawn and answered "Believe me Brawn, when you been in the game as long as me you'll realise there's no such thing as coincidence."

"So what's the deal with the talking animals? Last time I checked animals on this planet were naked and couldn't talk." Rocket asked Ms Marvel.

"They're a hero team from another dimension, they're on a rescue mission." Ms Marvel simplified "The Champions are lending them a hand."

"And we'd really appreciate some help, Mr. Rocket." Kion added politley.

"Drop the mister, cat." Rocket corrected "So what do I get in return for helping you bozos?"

"The satisfaction that you helped us rescue innocent mammals." Bullet replied.

"Pass." Rocket waved off.

"How about you help us and I won't knock every tooth out of your skull." Scarlet sniped, sick of the unhelpful jerk.

"Try it ginger and see what happens." Rocket threatened back.

"I am Groot." Groot finally spoke up, sounding disappointed.

"Don't start with me, I know Gamora sent you keep an eye on me." Rocket argued with the tree.

"I am Groot." Groot sighed.

"Where are the rest of the guardians? Maybe they could be a bit more helpful." Maria enquired.

"They're up in Space, they just dropped me off for this solo mission. But Gamora sent ol' Groot here to spy on me." Rocket replied, sounding irked.

"I am Groot!" Groot shouted.

"Then go the amazon then and make out with other trees, see if I care!" Rocket yelled.

"I am Groot..." Groot said in a sad tone before leaving the room.

"...Um, did anyone understand that?" Kodi asked, still stunned by the fact that he just saw a walking alien tree.

"Nope." Spiderman answered " 'I am Groot' is all he can say but Rocket seems to understand him."

"Back to the matter at hand; what are you going to give me if I help you?" Rocket swerved the conversation.

Maria caved and said "I can let you have a few more guns and one of your bombs, but the rest stay here."

"As long as I get to choose which ones." Rocket insisted, already knowing which weapons he'd pick.

"Good, now start talking." Luna spoke, wanting to move the conversation forward "Why do you need to get to Latvaria?"

"There's an alien with a bounty on his head who took on a job from a Latvarian contact, I looked at his bank account and saw a massive amount of money being wired from a Latvarian bank through a shadow corporation." Rocket revealed, taking out a holo-tablet and reading from it "But before the alien headed to Latvaria he stopped off in New York and delivered something at a building owned by the same shadow corporation that paid him."

"Another alien?" Kodi half laughed, still reeling from seeing Groot.

"This alien got a name?" Wasp asked, her helmet off and resting in her lap.

"Tazerface." Rocket answered bluntly but the ridiculous title caused Scarlet, Wasp and Spiderman to start sniggering.

"Tazerface? Seriously?" Wasp chuckled.

"That's got to be a joke." Spiderman chortled.

"And I thought TNTiger was a crappy name." Scarlet laughed.

"He may have a moronic name but the guy is a real scumbag." Rocket said bitterly "He's killed a lot of good people and I want to bring him in."

"So where was the last sighting of Tazerface?" Snowguard asked, sensing that was a reason behind Rocket's anger.

"The docks near Chinatown, right here in New York. The dickhead was dropping off the item he stole for the shadow corporation that hired him." Rocket answered, his tone now more serious "But that was over a year ago."

"What makes you think you can pick up his trail there? It's been too long." Alice pointed out, she used to be an expert at tracking targets.

"Oh I'm sure they'll remember Tazerface, after all it's not every day that an alien delivers a stolen spaceship to your warehouse." Rocket smirked.

"Did you just spaceship?" Maria asked, suddenly worried.

"Indeed I did." Rocket grinned.

"...This just got a lot more complicated, if Latveria is buying stolen space craft then god knows what Doom is up to." Maria spoke, her mind trying to figure out all the possible scenarios.

"I couldn't give a shit what Doctor Doom wants with the space ship, all I want is Tazerface." Rocket stated.

"What kind of ship are we talking about here? Combat? Cruiser? Science vessel?" Iron Heart questioned, wanting to know the specs of the ship.

"Nah, it's a prisoner ship from Xandar, it's an old rust bucket named 'The Cauldron'." Rocket answered.

"A prisoner ship?" Olivia spoke "Holy crap..."

"What?" Rocket responded, wondering what had the mouse so spooked.

"I bet that's where the missing mammals are being held, on 'The Cauldron'." Olivia said to her team mates and The Champions.

"So if we find Tazerface, we find The Cauldron and we find the missing mammals." Luna summarized with a confident smile.

"Looks like we've got our mission," Ms Marvel smiled along before turning to Rocket and asking "Rocket, you got that address of the warehouse?"

"What do I look like, an amateur? Of course I have the freakin' address." Rocket responded "But first Hill needs to give me some of my guns back."

"Fine, I'll get Coulson to let you back into the armoury." Hill accepted, still troubled by the fact Doom had a space craft.

"Looks like we're heading to Chinatown." Brawn said, hoping this lead was solid.

"Not you, I need you to hang back and guard Alice back at the safehouse, after the whole Deadpool fiasco we're not leaving Alice alone again." Ms Marvel ordered.

"What? Why me?" Brawn questioned, unhappy about the order from the team leader.

"Two reasons, one; you went against my orders yesterday and attacked Team Ceartais without them doing anything and two; you were a jerk at Parker Industries this morning. This is your punishment." Ms Marvel laid down the law.

"Fine." Brawn tisked before looking at Alice "Come on, I'll get us take out on the way back."

" _Merci_ Amadeus." Alice thanked politely, she then went over hugged her wife and kissed her on the cheek "Be safe, _mi amour."_

"Don't worry about me," Luna cooed back, she then looked up at Brawn and added "keep my bunny safe Brawn."

"Will do." Brawn nodded, walking out of the crisis room dwarfing Alice who walked beside him.

About twenty minutes later the teams were back in the HQ's massive garage waiting for their SUVs to be brought around after Rocket had collected some of his weapons, while most of the members were chatting to Rocket and admiring his arsenal Bullet took Viv to the side and explained the wolf howl she had heard and a suspicion she had.

"You think Director Hill has one of the missing mammals?" Viv wanted clarification, speaking in a low volume so the others wouldn't here.

"Look two of the missing mammals are wolves; Clara Bloom and Arthur Knight. I know what I heard wasn't a recording, there is always a slight crackle with that." Bullet reasoned.

"So why haven't you told the others about this?" Viv wondered.

"Because there is a chance I'm wrong and it could sour our relationship with SHIELD even more, I need to know if I'm right before I can confront Hill with this." Bullet explained.

"And you want me to help you investigate?" Viv assumed.

"Well you are a walking super computer, I know you stopped Bella hacking satellites so I'm guessing you can hack into SHIELD's security cams and see if I'm right." Bullet gave her reasons for trusting in the sythenzoid.

"You are correct in accessing my abilities however it will take time, if I rush and hack right now I will be discovered." Viv informed.

"So you'll help me?" Bullet asked with hope.

"Of course, I trust in your judgement and I distrust Hill's moral integrity...besides you are now one of my friends." Viv gifted a rare smile, too bad Bullet couldn't see it.

"Thank you, Viv. You're the best." Bullet smiled back.

A few minutes later the teams bundled into the SUVs and headed for Chinatown with Coulson and Maria watching them as they left the compound "Well this went from a minor kidnapping case to a potential international incident in a heartbeat." Maria breathed, clearly stressed.

"If Doom is involved our government won't sanction us to support The Champions if they have to go to Latveria." Coulson said, knowing full well the ramifications of Doom's involvement.

"I know me and The Champions don't see eye to eye but they're hearts are in the right place...however this time they may be out of their depth." Maria spoke her mind.

"But they've got Team Ceartais with them as back up." Coulson replied, the agent had taken a shine to the super mammals from Zootopia.

"True but Roar and Spitfire are they're only heavy hitters, if they go against Doom they'll be dead and you know it." Maria said grimly.

"So what do we do to help them?" Coulson asked.

"We get them some help." Maria answered "Call Steve Rogers, it's time for the avengers to assemble."

000

Back at the safehouse Alice was snuggled up on the sofa watching a world war two documentary on TV while munching on a veggie burger and fries that Brawn had bought her. Brawn feeling conscious about eating any mammal meat in front of the bunny had ordered a chicken burger and was sat on a nearby armchair watching the documentary about the war in the pacific "This world is frightening." Alice said out of nowhere.

"You mammals don't have wars where you come from?" Brawn asked, assuming that this was what Alice was getting at.

"Oh we do, but never on this scale, there was never a second great war." Alice answered, shuddering while watching the grainy black and white footage of atom bomb hitting Hiroshima "Nuclear weapons have never been used in combat."

"I wish the same could be said for this world." Brawn sighed "I bet you'll be glad when you can go home, at least you can give birth in a more peaceful dimension."

"If it was up to me I'd never want my kits to see the horrors of death," Alice spoke solemnly, resting a paw on her stomach "I never want them to see what I've seen."

"I know this a private question but when will you start to show? Rabbits are only pregnant for a month, right?" Brawn asked, sounding curious.

"I'll start to get my bump in a few days, after all there's five kits in here." Alice said, sounding a little giddy, she was actually excited about getting a baby bump "I still can't believe I'm pregnant."

"Why? Have you and Luna attempted with donors before?" Brawn followed up, stuffing a few fries into his mouth.

"No this was our first time trying, it's just...I've always wanted to be a mother, to have a family, but I convinced myself that I was never going to happen. I thought I would always be an assassin, that I would be weapon til the day I died." Alice confided.

"Listen, Alice. I'm sorry about making a big deal about your, well, uh, former profession." Brawn awkwardly apologised.

Alice let out a small laugh and said "Don't worry you can say villain, there's no denying what I used to be. And I accept your apology. But may I ask why you felt so strongly about it?"

"It's-" Brawn began.

"And don't say it's complicated." Alice interrupted "All problems have a simple foundation, just break it down your issue to its core."

"I thought you were a hero, not a psychologist." Brawn avoided.

"My master taught me to tackle emotions head on, deal with them and move on." Alice clarified "And stop deflecting."

Brawn felt emotionally backed into a corner, this small rabbit had somehow ensnared him into talking "I guess it's because I nearly became a villain myself." he found himself saying.

"You?" Alice reacted, surprised.

"When I first became the Hulk I could control my power, I had all my intelligence and self control when I was in that form but over time my anger started to creep up on me, created a monster and that monster nearly got people killed a few times." Brawn confessed "If it hadn't been for The Champions or my sister, the Hulk could've killed someone, that's why I made the decision to sacrifice half of my power to gain control, that's why I became Brawn."

"So the hatred you have for villains is also aimed at yourself?" Alice summed up.

"I...I guess, yeah. Damn, that's messed up." Brawn realised, the weight of this conclusion was blowing his mind.

"I think you need to talk to your friends about this, not some random bunny you barely know." Alice advised with a sympathetic smile.

"I've never been good at talking about feelings." Brawn replied.

"Then start with just one, Riri is your best friend on the team, try it with her." Alice suggested.

Brawn rolled his eyes and responded with "You trying to get us together, to?"

Alice shook her head and said "If something is going to happen between you two, it will happen. No amount of pressure from me or anyone else will change that. But all I see is two friends having a rough time, so talk to her, explain why you've been acting this way and hug it out."

Brawn was grateful for the advice but instead of thanking her he joked "You practising your motherly advice already?"

"Maybe." Alice smiled, looking down at her tummy and wondering what problems her kids would face in the future and how she would help them.

000

"Ah warehouses, the generic bad guy location." The Mage jested as he stepped into the docklands.

"Yeah it's never a nice house in the suburbs or a theme park." The Wasp chimed in, the group of heroes had parked their cars at the small parking lot outside the docks.

"I don't care if it's a goddamn brothel, I'm getting the information I need." Rocket stated, cocking the large energy rifle in his paws.

"Easy Rocket, this is still a normal dock, there's a lot of innocent people that work here, we're not going in all guns blazing." Ms Marvel cautioned, walking through the docks and noticing the workers taking pictures of the heroes on their phones.

"Damn, Marvel you're breaking my balls here, and here was me thinking you'd be cool like your mom." Rocket complained, leading the heroes to warehouse L1.

"My mom?" Ms Marvel replied, confused by the raccoon.

"Yeah, Danvers, she's more of shoot first, ask questions later sort." Rocket said.

"Carol isn't my mom." Ms Marvel laughed.

"Wait, what? But you're Ms Marvel, she's Captain Marvel, aren't you like Carol junior or something?" Rocket asked, befuddled.

Ms Marvel continued laughing and answered "No, we're not related. Heck, we're not even the same race."

"Huh? What's race?" Scarlet queried.

"Oh boy, now we've opened up this can of worms." Wasp breathed.

"I guess to mammals, there is no such thing as race, only species." Snowguard noted.

"Can someone please explain?" Roar requested, the huge white lion was towering over everyone else.

"Well, humans come from all over the planet and depending on their ancestry they inherit different physical traits." Viv explained "Snowguard is an indigenous Canadian and has the physical traits of her people."

"I'm Pakistani American and inherited my looks from my family." Ms Marvel said "Wasp descends from white Europeans."

"She doesn't look that white, more pinkish." Andraste observed, looking up at Wasp.

"It's just a word that easily identifies us." Wasp shrugged.

"Yeah it's like how me and Spidey are refereed to as 'Black' because we have African ancestors." Iron Heart added.

"Hey I'm half hispanic." Spiderman protested.

"You are?" Iron Heart asked back "Well how was I supposed to know? All I ever see is your mouth when you're eating."

"So it's like different fur colours with you guys?" Spitfire tried to sum up.

"Basically, there's just a lot of discrimination and negative stereotypes that go with it." Spiderman confirmed.

"Discrimination?" Mage queried.

"Ok as much I'd love to do a TedTalk on racism in America, we have a mission to be getting on with." Ms Marvel shut down the discussion as they came to warehouse L1, the warehouse doors were locked up tight and unlike the other warehouses around it, no noises were coming from inside.

"A lone warehouse, with closed doors and tinted windows. Not suspicious at all." Iron Heart said sarcastically.

"Bullet, can you detect anything in there?" Spitfire asked the gunslinger.

Bullet focused her powers and smelled six unique scents, but was having a hard time detecting the bodies that's when she realised "The Warehouse has an electric field dampener, I can't detect any shapes with the doors closed, but I can smell six people...and gun powder."

"Why would it have a dampener?" Spiderman asked, looking up at the generic looking warehouse.

"Because they didn't want stolen space tech being detected by SHIELD satellites." Rocket figured "I bet this place is a chop shop for spaceships."

"I'm not sure my cloaking ability would work in there, so my recon skills would be useless I'm afraid." Viv added.

"I don't like it, we're going in blind." Spitfire commented, frustrated that her thermal imagining was useless on the building.

"Welcome to my world." Bullet kidded.

"Hey there's an open window up there, I'll take a peek." Wasp said, pointing at a small opening in the window.

"Be careful, Wasp." Snowguard fretted as her friend shrunk down and flew up to thw window, she zipped in and there was about a dozen or seconds silence.

And then came a pained "Arrrrrrgh!"

"Wasp!" Ms Marvel panicked.

"Roar bust the door down!" Spitfire ordered in an instance.

"On it!" Roar snarled before shoulder barging the huge doors down, he charged inside but in an instant he was ensnared by an electrified net that fell from the rafters causing him to fall to floor and scream with agony.

"KION!" Scarlet yelled, running to the aid of her friend only for a gunshot to hit her left leg, sending her tumbling to the ground before she had chance to stand up she was pinned to the ground by two swords plunging through her back.

As Scarlet cried out in pain, her attacker above her gloated "Oh quit your whining, you have a healing factor, don't ya'?" the attacker was a red headed woman who was dressed in what looked to black leather bondage gear, her breasts were exposed with only her nipples covered by black tape. Half of her face was painted snow white while the other showed off her natural freckled complexion, her eyes were crazed and her smile twisted, she was enjoying this.

"Typhoid, behind you!" A voice called out.

The woman known as Typhoid turned around to see a furious looking Bullet heading for her but the striped gunslinger was brought down by a tranq dart to the neck. Typhoid Mary looked at her saviour and grinned "Thanks Bone boy."

"Focus, Mary. We still have a fight on our hands." Crossbones grunted before having his tranq gun whipped out of his hand by a web shot.

"You're not getting away this time!" Spiderman shouted as he swung towards Crossbones but fell out of the air when his web was cut by a flying dagger, Spiderman crashed to the ground and immediately got a boot to the face from a new foe.

Spiderman was dazed but looked up at the enemy who caught him off guard, the man was in blue and silver armour, he wore a white hood and cape and his face was covered by an armoured mask shaped like a skull "T-Taskmaster?!" Spiderman choked.

"The one and only." Taskmaster replied, before stomping on Spiderman's face one more time, knocking him out.

Ms Marvel tried to stretch out her arms and grab taskmaster but out of the shadows a small needle whistled through the air and pricked her wrist, she fell to the ground in an instant and her body returned to its normal unstreched form, her eyes were open with terror, she couldn't move, she couldn't scream, whatever had been in that small acupuncture needle had paralysed her.

Snowguard had sprouted her wings and attempted to fly to the rescue of her allies but was jumped upon by a shadow from the ceiling and sent crashing to the ground while her face was pummelled by the muscle bound man "A magic beast is still just a beast to Kraven!" he snarled, the bearded man was garbed in the furs of mammals and had joy in his face while he beat Snowguard into submission.

"Hey asshole, pick on someone your own size!" Rocket yelled before firing an energy blast at Kraven knocking him into some crates, Rocket rushed over to the barely conscious Snowguard and soothed "It's going to be ok, kid. We're going to get out of this."

Viv, Spitfire and Iron Heart had been trying to get the electrified net off Roar but didn't notice the arrow land on the floor beside them, Andraste who was busy exchanging fire with Crossbones and Typhoid Mary saw the arrow at the last second, it resembled her EMP arrow, she looked at her mechanized friends and screamed "Girls, run!"

But they didn't have time, the EMP arrow exploded and the three mechanized heroines fell to the ground to a chorus of painful cries, Andraste knew that it would take at least two minutes for Spitfire to reboot but that was two minutes they didn't have.

Mage had been focusing on Taskmaster and so far the skull masked man had been dodging all his attacking "Why won't you stay still!?" Mage barked, throwing another punch at the merc.

"You're easy to predict, mutt." Taskmaster taunted.

Mage growled before launching a flashbang card at Taskmaster's face, the merc yelled in alarm and staggered back giving Mage a chance to throw a tazer card at his chest, rendering the foe unconscious "Predict that, ass hat." Mage jibed.

"ENOUGH!" A female voice bellowed from the other end of the warehouse, Typhoid Mary and Crossbones ceased their attacks instantly while Kraven got to his shaky feet. Andraste swiftly moved next to Mage and they both aimed their weapons at the source of the voice, with the archer drawing a tranq arrow and the trickster with a fresh tazer card.

"Step out of the shadows, coward!" Andraste blustered.

"Oh...now you sound familiar." A new voice crooned, Andraste could've sworn it sounded like Alice, but that was impossible.

"Yurei?" Mage spoke, thinking the same thing as Andraste.

"I am no ghost," The French voice replied, a woman stepped out from the shadows dressed in a black sneaking suit, she had white hair and golden eyes, with the bottom half of her face covered by cloth mask with a skull design "just another Ronin."

"No..." Andraste whispered, her mind filling with dread, if the human version of Alice was here that meant one thing.

"Oh it's the furry brigade!" A voice from the darkness teased.

"Not her, not now." Andraste uttered with fear, her paws beginning to shake.

Andi stepped out and stood by Ronin, the ginger woman was dressed in an outfit Andraste recognised as her classic costume with the bodice and feathered hat but as soon as the vixen looked into those amber eyes she realised she wasn't looking at her alternate self she was looking at the demented and dark Andi. "Here we were having a nice little tea party with Crossbones and his buddies and you come in unannounced and try and ruin our fun, that's very rude of you." Andi hammed up.

"Is that who I think it is?" Mage whispered to Andraste, staring at the woman with disbelief.

"Yeah...it's her." Andraste whispered before lowering her bow and addressing Andi "Listen, I don't if you're still in there, but Luna I need you to come out."

"What? How did..." Ronin muttered, her subconsciously gripping the hilt of her sword.

"What did you just call me?" Andi gave a sick smile, stepping closer to the vixen "Because I could've sworn you called me a name that belongs to a Mommy's girl."

"Luna, you've got to fight Andi, if I can beat her, so can you!" Andraste willed, hoping that a little bit of the other identity still resided in the villainess.

Andi drew one of her daggers and snarled "Before I skin you alive and turn you into a scarf, tell me who the hell you are!"

Luna reacted by passing her bow to Mage and unsheathing her daggers before declaring "My name is Luna Elise Wilde!"

(DUN DUN DUN! Four Marvel Villain cameos!? It's Andraste vs Andi! How will the teams get out of this one!? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror...you know what? No spoilers for next week. Please review and c ya soon...)


	19. Unleashed

(AN/Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Ok big shout out to Dev Team member Lis who wrote part of this chapter and to the rest of the dev team who help me craft the chapter each week I'd also like to thank all you lovely readers who liked, faved, followed, reblogged and reviewed the last update. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 18- Unleashed**

Andi drew one of her daggers and snarled "Before I skin you and turn you into a scarf, tell me who the hell you are!"

Luna reacted by passing her bow to Mage and unsheathing her daggers before declaring "My name is Luna Elise Wilde!"

A spell of quiet fell over the scene, the only sound was from Scarlet who was grunting and struggling to free herself from the swords impaled in her back. Crossbones hid a stunned face under his mask, he knew that was Andi's real name and if he also knew that if anyone refereed to her by that name they would be gutted in instant, he had seen it happen in an underworld bar in Milan. Typhoid Mary seemed amused by the scene especially by the confused look in Ronin's golden eyes and the bloodthirsty scowl that Andi wore. "...Well this is both interesting and infuriating." Andi growled lowly "We take a job involving talking animals from some crappy dimension and the one who comes at me is the flea-bitten bitch version of that mommy's girl Luna."

Andraste felt a twinge of anger at being called 'Mommy's girl', the human version of Andi was truly like her zootopian counterpart. Andraste cast aside her hate and curiosity, she needed to stall Andi long enough for Spitfire to reboot, hopefully by that point other members of Ceartais and The Champions would be back in the fray and ready for a counterattack "Petty insults? Really? Whether you're a vixen or a human, you still act like a child." Andraste replied, wanting to extend the back and forth.

"At least I woke up to my true potential, morality is such a burden, there's freedom in chaos." Andi smouldered, twirling her daggers.

"Looks like Alice hasn't been keeping you on your meds." Andraste responded.

Ronin heard this and said to Andi "She's trying to distract you, she's waiting for her allies to recover."

"Then let's end this before they get back on their feet." Andi grinned menacingly, stepping towards the vixen.

"She doesn't fight alone!" Mage blustered, ready to aid Andraste.

"Down dog!" Ronin warned, holding up her hand to show an unconscious Wasp grasped in her hand "Interfere and I'll crush this insect."

Mage didn't know what dog meant but he was sure it was derogatory, the wolf let out a frustrated "Shit."

"It's ok Mage, we can't let Wasp, or the others get anymore injured." Andraste assured, hoping Mage would get the hint to stand down and wait for the others to recover.

Then in that second, she heard rushed footsteps heading for her, Andraste anticipated the attack and ducked down just as Andi swiped at where her head had been, the fox uppercutted the woman with pommel of one of her daggers before rolling away. Andi didn't relent and went in for another attack with both daggers, Andraste parried the knives with her own but with Andi's superior strength and size she knew wouldn't last long with this form of defence, she needed to dodge in order to survive. Andraste saw an opening and zipped between Andi's legs, slashing at both calves and causing the assassin to curse "Bitch!", the blood seeped through her torn trousers and dripped on the floor as she went after Andraste again, with each attack the vixen dodged the killer's rage grew. While Andi's 'Blood rage' mutation gave her an adrenaline boost it depleted her focus and reason, making it easy for Andraste to dodge.

Scarlet who was desperately trying to free herself was also watching the fight unfold, she could see that Andi's movements were sporadic and fuelled by anger, a lot like her own fighting style and she also knew that when you're that pissed off the slightest distraction could throw you off balance. Scarlet fought through her pain and bellowed "Kick that skank's ass, Lu!"

Andi stumbled to a halt, looked at Scarlet with a somewhat scared expression and uttered "Robbie?" this weird rabbit like creature sounded exactly like her sister but before she could even think about how Andraste took advantage and swiped at Andi's knuckles, causing her to her scream out in pain, drop her daggers and stagger back.

Andraste used the momentum and leapt on Andi's chest, sending the red head to the ground and placing both daggers on her throat "Yield." she spoke, thankful to her sister for the assist.

"I'd rather die than admit defeat." Andi reacted, spitting in Andraste's face.

Andraste didn't flinch as the spit hit her cheek, she kept her attention on her twisted reflection "Where's Tazerface and where are the missing mammals?" she pressed with the important questions, not wanting to waste this opportunity.

"That loser? He's off-" Andi began to answer.

"Andi, silence!" Ronin snapped at her lover.

"She's earned this answer; the boss can be mad at me all he wants." Andi replied to Ronin before returning her attention to the vixen who blades to her throat "Tazerface is a terrible soldier but he's a decent pilot, he's flying the Cauldron as we speak, and all those little furry creatures are there with him."

"Tazerface is back in space!?" A frustrated Rocket butted in, the raccoon had been tending to the heavily beaten Snowguard.

"No, he's here but he's also not here." Andi chuckled despite her neck feeling the cold steel of Andraste's blades.

"Enough!" Ronin yelled at Andi, not wanting her reveal any more secrets before switching her attention back to Mage and Andraste "It seems that we have a stalemate, you've got a knife to my wife's neck and all your friends are indisposed. How about you let her go and I'll give you back Wasp?"

It was terrible deal and they all knew as soon as the exchanged was made the villains would likely kill every hero in the room, Andraste was trying to form a strategy but then the clink of chain caught everyone's attention. Out of nowhere a chain flew through the air and wrapped around Ronin's wrist before it glowed red with heat, Ronin squealed as the chain burned her and Wasp's unconscious body flew out of her hand, Mage dove forward and caught the miniature heroine in his paws and smiled "Gotcha'."

"Who!?" Crossbones shouted, looking to where the chain had come from but as soon as he saw who stood in the doorway he became less and less interested in a fight and more concerned about a retreat "Aw, crap."

In the huge doorway of the warehouse were eight figures; the chain was being held by a man in black leather racing suit with a skull mask that was aflame, a man in red and gold armour who was aiming a replusor beam at the bad guys, another man was dressed in a jet black outfit with a mask that had pointed cat like ears, a mask-less blonde woman in red, blue and yellow flight suit, a bearded man in his mid-forties wearing an red cape and a bizzare outfit hovered in the air above the new group, another figure wore an outfit emblazoned with the stars and stripes and on the forehead of his helmet was adorned an A and in his hand a round shield with a star on it, the largest member of the group was a eight foot tall muscle bound woman whose skin was the same shade of green as Brawn's and finally there was a man who looked like he stepped out of a fantasy book adorned in armour and wearing a winged silver helmet and held in his gold prosthetic arm was a hammer. "You screwed up now, Ronin!" Ghost Rider smarmed, his voice sounded strange like a weird deepening filter was running through it, he released Ronin from the chain and the assassin in pain as she held on to her freshly burned wrist.

"Well damn, we must've really pissed someone off if The Avengers showed up." Typhoid Mary giggled, if she was intimidated she was fantastic at masking it "Although I remember She-Hulk be more femme and less butch, she used to way prettier."

"You dare insult Lady Walters!?" Thor growled, pointing his hammer at Typhoid Mary "She is beauty incarnate."

"Hulk thinks Thor's beautiful too." She Hulk smiled confidently, the green giantess was wearing a slightly torn white tank top and ripped denim shorts that were once jeans.

"Guys less flirty, more fighty." Iron Man reminded the couple, sounding ticked off

Captain Marvel caught the glimpse of the paralysed Ms Marvel and said, "If there is any lasting damage on The Champions, I'm going to tear you apart."

"Oh, get your head out of your ass, Captain Marvel." Andi called out, still at the mercy of Andraste's daggers "We all know you Avengers won't kill, you're all on SHIELD's leash."

"I can make exception for the scum who tried to kill my sister." Black Panther growled at Crossbones.

"Nothing personal, Panther, it was just a contract." Crossbones replied casually.

"Can we skip with the dialogue and get to the part where we arrest these criminals? The Champions and their friends look like they need medical attention." Doctor Strange interjected, looking at the fallen heroes.

"Strange is right." Captain America concurred before stepping forward and addressing Ronin "Now we can fight but you know how it will end, we outnumber and outmatch you. Make it easy on yourselves and surrender, it will look good for you when you go to trial."

"Oh t-there won't be a fight." A groggy voice spoke, everyone turned to see Taskmaster staggering to his feet after being floored by Mage "We're walking out of here and you're not going to follow us."

"Thou wishes to my patience." Thor replied, however it was baffling to Andraste and Mage that the blonde man was speaking like a Shakespearian character.

"I calculated that there was a 9% chance of this meeting being interrupted but I also knew there was a 2% chance that you Avengers would show up, so I got some insurance." Taskmaster stated, holding up a smartphone "I've placed twelve bombs around Chinatown and the moment I saw you I activated the timer, you've got ten minutes to locate them."

"Friday hack this guy's phone and deactivate the bombs." Iron Man ordered confidently to his on-board AI but within two seconds the thundering boom of a explosion echoed across the neighbourhood startling everyone apart from Taskmaster.

"I should've mentioned that any attempt to hack them remotely would trigger one of the bombs, that sounded like the closest, a busy bus stop I wonder how many people you just killed Iron Man?" Taskmaster said smugly, imagining the horror on Iron's Face under his helmet.

"You bastard!" Ghost Rider seethed taking a step forward.

"Ah I wouldn't do that, I've set a proximity sensor on my comrades, if you touch us the bombs go off...So miss Vixen I suggest you get off Andi before more people die." Taskmaster said.

Andraste didn't hesitate and hopped off Andi who immediately got back on her feet and limped over to Ronin "This fight isn't over Andi." Andraste vowed.

"I couldn't agree more, Mommy's girl." Andi barbed back while Ronin positioned herself, so her wife could lean on her and take the weight off her slashed legs.

Crossbones went over and picked up the still unconscious Kraven while asking Ronin "Where's the jet?"

"Stealth cloaked at the docks." Ronin answered leading the band of villains out of the warehouse.

"You'll pay for this Ronin, I promise you that." Captain Marvel spoke coldly.

"You said that last time and I still got away." Ronin smirked, not even looking back as the villains exited the building "Make any attempts to follow us and we'll trigger the bombs."

As soon as they were out of sight, a devastated Iron Man uttered "Oh god what did I just do?"

"Tony, focus. We still have nine other bombs to find." Captain America rallied "You, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, Thor and Black Panther locate and deactivate the bombs, the rest of us will get the others medical attention."

"Roger." Captain Marvel nodded, flying out of the Warehouse with some other Avengers following swiftly.

Ghost Rider went over and lifted up the paralysed Ms Marvel while She Hulk lifted the electrified net off the out cold Roar "Big kitty sleeping." she commented.

Captain America marched over to Andraste while Mage raced over to Scarlet to get the swords out of her back. Captain America extended his hand and greeted "Captain America, team leader of The Avengers."

"Andraste, second in command of Team Ceartais." Andraste introduced herself "I'm going to guess Hill called you to help us."

"You guess right, we didn't mean to step on your toes, but we had our orders." Captain America replied politely.

"It's good thing you showed up, that ambush did a number on us." Andraste replied, glad to see Scarlet was already on her feet and her wounds were closing up "But it isn't a total loss."

"How do you mean?" Captain America queried.

Andraste held up a usb stick and grinned "I swiped this from Andi, I bet it's encrypted but maybe there's something on it that'll make up for this defeat."

000

Doctor Doom had kept his promise and put Clara back in the general population area of the Cauldron after working on the ship's energy problem, she hadn't solved the problem but was confident she could crack it in the next few days. As soon as the she-wolf was returned to general population she was hounded by Esso, Vanessa, Harper and Regina to check if she was ok and if she had learned anything. Clara took them into her cell and proceeded to tell them everything; about Doom, humans, what The Cauldron actually was, Zoe escaping and about Nightcrawler. When Clara had finished explaining the situation she had hoped her friends would be a little more positive, but the truth seemed to weigh heavier for them "This can't be happening, we can't be floating in that purple cloud still." Regina freaked out, the mare's eyes were wide with anxiety.

"Regina it'll be ok." Harper soothed however the stag didn't even believe his own words.

"Are you sure this Doom guy didn't say why he kidnapped us in the first place?" Vanessa pressed, agitated by the revelations.

"He won't tell me until I fix the energy output issue with the engine." Clara reminded.

"And you say this Nightcrawler creature is the source of the purple cloud?" Vanessa asked again, trying to get things clear in her head.

"Kurt's mutation had been amplified by Doom, that's how the breach to our dimension was created in the first place." Clara said, sick of repeating details that she already told.

"Ok but happens-" Vanessa began to ask but was cut off.

"For god's sake Van, quit it with the questions." Esso griped, who was sat on her top bunk "Clara's already explained everything she knows."

Vanessa looked up at Esso and saw the lynx appeared calm causing her to ask, "How can you be so relaxed about this, haven't you been listening to what Clara's been saying?"

"I have and honestly it scares the shit out of me, but do you know why I'm calm? Because Clara is calm, which means she's already working on a plan to get us out of here." Esso answered, smiling at Clara.

"Not bad, Esso." Clara smiled back.

"W-wait? You know how to get us out?" Regina stuttered, the horse was hugging onto Harper's arm for comfort.

"I've got nothing concrete yet, but I've got a few ideas." Clara claimed, "But we have an ace up our sleeve; Zoe is on the loose in this place."

"But what can one bat do? Doom will kill her if he finds her." Harper fretted.

"Zoe is in the special forces, she knows how to evade capture and she also knows how to sabotage the enemy's base, so we need to be ready for when she causes enough chaos for us to get out of general population and onto the bridge of the ship." Clara answered.

"You think she can do it? Get control of this place?" Vanessa pressed.

"If anyone can, it's her." Clara smiled "But we're not going to sit around and wait for her to rescue us, I'll be trying to get us out too. So, we need to stay strong, we need to stay focused and we need to work together to get out of here."

000

Every since she joined army, Zoe had her own bucket list. And neither being dragged to another dimension nor being prisoner in some good damn spaceship were on that list. After her escape from solitary, the ginger bat found refuge in ventilation system of the ship. Somehow she managed to avoid detection even though the bots were searching for her constantly. That wasn't making her feel any better. Right now she was sitting in some small ventilation duct far away from the main part of the ship. She needed a break, a small moment to catch a breath from the unceasing run for her life. This whole situation was so bizarre that Zoe still couldn't believe that it was really happening. She survived some pretty messed up events in her life, after all she was a soldier, but this was over the top. Nightfall took off her glasses and closed her eyes, tired from the lack of sleep. She was trying to think about some plan how to get herself and all of the kidnapped mammals out of this place. That was her mission, her job, yet… In this moment all she could think about was her family back home. She could only imagine how Aleks was living through this. He was so emotional sometimes. Zoe hoped that he had someone keeping eye on him now before he did something stupid. And what about kids? She needed to go back for them. As a mother she didn't even for a second think about the possibility of never seeing her children again. She took a deep breath to calm her mind. She needed to focus. Some loud noise rang out in the distance. That was a bad sign. It was a time to start moving again. With determination the Camelot soldier started to crawl again through the duct. She wasn't going to give up. Not now, not ever. Till she got back home.

000

Wasp could feel something in the back of her hand, her head was hazy and it took effort to open her eyes, she squinted when the bright florescent light hit her eyes, she managed to look down at herself to see she was dressed in a hospital gown, tucked in a bed with a IV drip going into the back of her left hand "What?" She croaked, her throat was very dry.

"Oh, thank god, Viv she's awake." Hannah's voice spoke, but Wasp didn't see where the striped hybrid was, her vision was still blurry.

"Hannah?" Wasp asked in a raspy voice, her muscles felt strained and body felt heavy.

"Take it slowly, Nadia." Viv cautioned, the sythenzoid and Hannah came into focus, they were stood in what looked like a military infirmary.

"Where are we?" Wasp asked, trying to piece together her memories.

"SHIELD's New York HQ, we're in the medical bay." Hannah answered, "You've been unconscious for three days."

"Three days!?" Wasp gasped, looking around her bed and realising she was hooked up to monitors and cringed when she saw a catheter bag half full of urine hanging off her bed "What happened?"

"We were ambushed at the docks near Chinatown, remember? We went to investigate a lead Rocket had on Tazerface?" Viv prompted, hoping Wasp would remember on her own.

"I remember flying through the window of the warehouse and then nothing." Wasp struggled.

Hannah poured Wasp a cup of water and passed it to her while saying "You were poisoned by Ronin, the toxins put you into cardiac arrest on the way back here."

"Are the others ok?" Wasp worried before taking a big gulp of water.

"Amaka suffered a broken cheekbone and Ms Marvel has been recovering at her home for the last two days but they'll be alright." Viv informed.

"Who attacked us?" Wasp asked, passing her cup to Hannah for a refil.

"Six villains; Andi, Ronin, Crossbones, Taskmaster, Typhoid Mary and Kraven the hunter, they all escaped. It would seem that Doom has hired them but for what we do not know." Viv answered.

"If it wasn't for The Avengers we probably wouldn't be having this conversation." Hannah added passing Wasp the refilled cup.

"The Avengers showed up?" Wasp questioned, confused by the top tier team's appearance and the fact that the villains escaped.

"Director Hill called them, it appears she doesn't have faith that we can take care of Doom." Viv said, sounding irked "They are dropping by in an hour to discuss the findings of data recovered from the scene, hopefully it will point us in the direction of the missing mammals."

"We're holding the meeting in the medical bay." Hannah chimed.

"Seriously?" Wasp replied, aghast "I haven't showered in three days, I'm hooked up to a catheter and feel like crap. I really don't want people seeing me like this."

"Forgive us Nadia but it is of the upmost importance that we hold the meeting here." Viv responded.

"Why?" Wasp queried, sensing something was amiss.

"Because Hill has been lying to us." Hannah said, sounding disappointed "One of the missing mammals is being held captive in the lab across the hall from this medical bay."

"You're joking?" Wasp scoffed "You mean she's had us on a merry chase whilst one of the mammals has been here the whole time?"

"It took me thirty-seven hours and twenty-two minutes to hack into the security cameras undetected but I confirmed it myself; Arthur Knight is in a high tech cell across the hall." Viv informed.

"So, when the others get her with the Avengers and Hill, we're going to ask her about it and demand to see him?" Wasp assumed.

"No, we're going to help him break out, well Viv is at least." Hannah answered.

"Both the Champions and Team Ceartais have agreed to this plan, I will cloak myself and assist in freeing Arthur while the meeting takes place here, then Hill's lies will be exposed and there is no way for her to deny it." Viv summarised.

"So, then The Avengers are more likely to side with us instead of SHIELD, very sneaky, I like it." Wasp gave a tired grin.

000

Arthur Knight had lost track of how many days he had been in the very clinical looking cell, there was no way to tell when one day started and another began in the cube of frosted glass. He was sat on his cot and swimming in negative thoughts, he had been trying to stay positive for the sake of the mammals that he had been protecting, he held onto the hope that they were in a cell close by and maybe rescue was coming but as the days rolled on by it became harder and harder to keep that hope alive. The blue furred wolf held onto his strange looking pendant and whispered "I'm sorry Johnathan...I failed them, just as I failed you. I couldn't protect little Jason...I can't even protect myself."

"Don't give up hope just yet." A female voice spoke out of nowhere.

Arthur knew he was alone in the cell, so he muttered "And now I'm hearing voices, it's official; I'm going mad."

"You're not going mad Officer Knight; my name is Viv and I'm here to help you." The voice spoke.

"What?" Arthur replied, it felt like the source of the voice was coming from above him.

"I'm a friend of Team Ceartais, I'm going to help you get out of here, but you have to follow my every instruction." Viv said, the sythenzoid had turned invisible and had fazed into Arthur's cell.

"Y-yes." Arthur replied, the wolf couldn't believe it, he was getting out of here, he still had a chance to save his friends.

"I'm going to unlock the power dampener around your neck, as soon as it comes loose it will trigger an alarm and the guards will come in and try and restrain you. I need you to fight them off but don't kill them, just stall for time until my friends arrive, understand?" Viv instructed.

"Yeah, I got it." Arthur breathed, standing up.

"Are you ready?" Viv asked.

"Go for it." Arthur confirmed.

All of sudden there was a loud click and the power dampener around his neck fell to the floor, a siren began to blare, and all the lights started to flash red which made Arthur's senses feel off. However, he wasted no time and ignored the new feeling in his senses as he tapped into his power because he wasn't going to wait for the cell door to open, the wolf then took a deep breath and closed his eyes as he focused on the energy field around him which made the strange looking pendant in his paw glow blue which Viv noticed but was taken back when Arthur let out a massive howl and made a shock wave of blue energy erupt from his body shattering the frosted glass of his cell around him.

A blue aura then slowly started to envelope his body as the glass fell around him and for the first time ever while he placed the pendent back around his neck Arthur wasn't scared of his power, it was unleashed and he was embracing it.

(AN/ So what did you guys think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Arthur makes his grand entrance, Hill's lies catch up with her and little Aaron makes a new friend. Ok so the next chapter won't be coming until November 5th because next weekend I will be at London Comic Con and I won't have any time to write, I'm actually meeting 2 dev team members irl for the 1st time so that'll be cool. So please review and c ya soon...)


	20. Seren

(AN/ Hey folks, it's Garouge/crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror, thank you everyone who supports this fic, we've surpassed 500 reviews with this fic, making it nearly 4000 for the series! Thank you so much for keeping up with this crazy series about heroes in zootopia. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 19- Seren**

Robyn had always had an issue with her temper, some would argue that when she was cross it was her default setting and right now it was taking all her mental strength to keep it under control. The morning after the defeat in Chinatown, Hannah and Viv had sat both The Champions and Team Ceartais and explained their suspicions about Director Hill keeping one of the missing wolves captive. While it was only a suspicion at that point, Robyn had automatically jumped to the conclusion that Hill was guilty along with Brawn who also seemed to distrust the SHIELD director too. Part of her anger stemmed from how easily the heroic allies were bested by the band of six villains but a lot more came from the injuries her friends had endured; Ms. Marvel had been left ill and weak, Snowguard had undergone surgery for the damage to her face and Wasp was rendered comatose by the toxins of Ronin's poisons.

When the next day came Viv bearing the conformation of Hannah's suspicions, Robyn's anger boiled over once again and she had ended up punching a hole in the wall in a rage when she saw the CCTV image of Arthur Knight being electrocuted in his cell. It took a full five minutes to calm down and for her friends to stop her marching out the door and confronting Hill about the deception. When Robyn was at a somewhat level headed temperament, Olivia proposed a plan to expose Hill in front of The Avengers during the meeting at SHIELD HQ, with winning over The Avengers' support as the goal in mind as well as freeing Arthur and revealing Hill's guilt.

So the day had come and Robyn was walking into the SHIELD headquarters along with the rest of her team and The Champions, they were heading to the medical wing where Wasp was recovering and where Hannah and Viv were already waiting. "This is such bullshit, we should've called Hill out the moment Viv got the evidence." Robyn quietly snarled as the group of heroes walked through the hallway.

"If we did that she could've moved Officer Knight before we had a chance to rescue him." Kion reasoned, the lion was more than used to Robyn's temper.

"Dial it back, Robbie." Luna eased.

"I understand your anger, Robyn. But we need to be smart about this, we need the Avengers on our side and exposing Hill in front of them will do that." Ms Marvel added, the usually chipper heroine sounded timid and tired, she was still recovering from the ambush.

"I know, I know...it's just infuriating." Robyn huffed.

"Look, the sooner we get this meeting over with, the sooner we can get back to hunting for the missing mammals." Brawn said, understanding Robyn's anger.

"I just hope Tony found something on the drive Luna grabbed, I hope he...never mind." Riri mumbled, she knew that her mentor felt responsible for the bomb going off in Chinatown, the blast had killed eight and injured dozens more.

"Tony will be ok, Riri." Spiderman reassured.

"He should hold no guilt for the lives lost in Chinatown, it was all the work of our twisted dopplegangers." Alice said firmly, walking hand in hand with Luna.

"What I don't understand is why we gave the drive to Iron Man in the first place." Spitfire groused, the mouse was walking along in her mech, just in case there was a need to restrain Knight when he broke out "Couldn't Viv or someone else try to decrypt it?"

"If Doom really is behind this plot then we need someone who's dealt with his tech and security systems before and The Avengers have faced off against Doom far more times than we have." Snowguard answered, the young mystic's face was still heavily bruised and her left cheek had thick bandages attached.

"I suppose," Kodi shrugged "shame Rocket went off with The Avengers, guess he didn't want to the let the drive out of his sight."

"There's that but also the fact that Rocket and Captain Marvel are old drinking buddies." Ms Marvel quipped, as she used her security card to open up the doors to the medical bay to find that The Avengers had already arrived and were chatting to Wasp, Viv and Hannah.

"You gave us quite a scare, Nadia." Captain Marvel smiled, sat on the edge of Wasp's hospital bed.

"Yeah I was tempted to call your old man and tell him what was going on." Captain America admitted causing a scowl to quickly form on Wasp's face.

"Fear not, young Wasp. I deterred Steve, we all know your relationship with Hank is somewhat tense." Thor assured, the blonde Asgardian was holding a 'Get Well Soon' balloon and a fruit basket for the injured Champion.

"Understatement of the century." Wasp smirked before adding "Thanks guys, thanks for saving our lives."

"Anytime, Nadia." Doctor Strange nodded.

Ghost Rider, who's face appeared like a normal hispanic guy instead of a flaming skull, looked over at the door and smiled at the newly arrived heroes "You come to check on the patient, too?"

Spitfire was about to formally thank The Avengers for their help but Ms Marvel, Riri and Snowguard barged right past the mech and raced to Wasp, hugging the eighteen year old tightly "You're awake!" Riri cheered.

"We were so worried!" Ms Marvel sniffed, unable to keep back her tears of relief.

"We shouldn't have let you go in that warehouse alone, we're so sorry." Snowguard apologised.

"Easy girls, I'm ok. A little poison won't keep me down." Wasp smiled warmly, burying herself in the group hug.

Rocket who was sat on a desk in the corner, rolled his eyes and groaned "Alright enough with the feelings, it's making me nauseous. Can we get on with the meeting already? I want to know where Tazerface is."

"We're starting nothing til Hill gets here." Brawn insisted, which caused Rocket to let out a loud tut.

Black Panther stood up from his chair and spoke "Then since we have time to spare, I have something important to say." The hero's cat like mask appeared to dissolve in revealing a black man in his late thirties with a neatly trimmed beard and wearing a dignified expression, he then walked to where Alice was and crouched down so he could speak with the bunny at eye level "You're the rabbit who saved my sister from Crossbone's bullet, are you not?"

"I am, your majesty." Alice replied, curtseying in accordance with royal etiquette.

Black Panther wore an impressed smile before offering his hand "I and The Kingdom of Wakanda owe you an invaluable debt, should you or your teammates ever need anything do not hesitate to ask."

Alice shook the monarch's hand and replied formally "Thank you, your majesty."

"The brave bunny who saved my sister has no need to call me such pompous titles, you may call me T'Challa." Black Panther chuckled, surprising the bunny with a hug.

Alice was caught off guard by the hug, stammered " _M-Merci_ T'Challa."

"Am I interrupting something?" A puzzled voice asked from the doorway, everyone turned to see Director Hill, Robyn could feel her anger bubbling to the surface so went over to Hannah and held her hand hoping that her wife's touch would sooth her.

"Panther hug bunny." She Hulk summed up, the green giantess was wearing fitted clothes instead of the rags from the other day.

Maria didn't bother to probe why and walked over to Wasp's bedside and greeted "Nice to see you're feeling better Miss Van Dyne."

"Thanks for looking after me, Maria." Wasp fake smiled, eagerly anticipating the reveal of Hill's deception.

"Are you sure you're ok to have the meeting here, Nadia? We'll understand if you want us to go somewhere else." Captain America offered, feeling bad for the teen heroine.

"Thanks for the concern, Cap but I want to know what Iron Man has found out." Wasp answered.

"Halle-freaking-luiah!" Rocket blustered "Can we start now?"

"Very well, Tony, if you will." Captain Marvel signalled for her friend to begin.

The helmet-less Iron man looked tired, as if hadn't slept in days but everyone could see the determination in his eyes, this was a man who wouldn't dwell on the death of innocents, he would act upon it "Ok so the usb stick foxy loxy pick-pocketed off her evil human twin was encrypted to hell with a Frankenstein mash up of earth and alien based security software, all with the distinct stench of Victor Von Doom's programming skills all over it, it took me and Friday nearly 36 hours to crack it and guess what? This flash drive isn't just a flash drive."

"So what is it?" Kodi queried, finally noticing the funny looks him and the other mammals were getting from The Avengers.

"It's an inter-dimensional and time warping messaging device." Tony answered.

"Say what now?" Ghost Rider spoke up.

"Yeah, dumb it down please." Kion requested.

"Fine, it's a device that not only is a storage device for files, it uses a basic text messaging system that can across dimensions bypassing the time differences between the realities." Tony explained.

"Huh?" Robyn sounded, still confused.

"It's a messaging system that could link our Earth and this Earth." Spitfire clarified "So Andi must've been to Zootopia at some point."

"Ten points to the steampunk mouse!" Iron Man reacted.

"Wait Andi went to Zootopia!?" Luna barked, fearful of what her dark reflection might have done in her city.

"Yeah and by the looks of it she was busy, she had a kill list of ten targets and instructions to steal a substance known as 'Night Howler'." Iron Man explained, instantly noticing the uncomfortable looks on the mammals faces "Judging from your 'Oh holy crap' faces I'm going to guess you know what Night Howler is?"

"Night Howler was used as a biological weapon in Zootopia nearly two decades ago by a prey supremacist criminal called Dawn Bellwether," Hannah told the story she had been told many times by her parents "it just has to touch the skin of the victim and they revert to their basic animal instincts, in the majority of cases they become violently savage."

"A weapon like that could do massive damage." Hill whispered, already thinking about defences against a chemical weapon attack.

"So who's on the kill list?" Captain America asked, sounding serious.

"We are." Iron Man answered glibly, everyone was so focused on the armoured hero that no one noticed Viv slowly back away and phase through a wall.

"Excuse me?" Captain Marvel reacted, thinking she had heard him wrong.

"Well the animal versions of us anyway, the versions of us from their Earth. I'm on the list, so are you, Strange, Reed Richards and others." Iron man explained "And according to these messages, Andi killed all of them."

"So this Doom guy sent Andi to kill the Zootopia versions of you guys for what? Revenge?" Robyn asked, sounding unconvinced.

"There has to be more to this plot, things are never that simple with Doom." Thor mused, setting down the fruit basket on a desk.

"Thor's right, Doom must have something to gain from having the mammal versions of heroes killed." Riri concurred, trying hard to think of the reason.

"I think you're all ignoring one vital piece of information in all this." Spitfire spoke up.

"What, Tin Can?" Rocket replied, clearly impatient and wanting the conversation to focus on finding Tazerface.

"That there's another dimensional rift to Zootopia." Spitfire clarified "SHIELD has been guarding the rift we came through and they've seen no sign of Andi, meaning she got through another portal."

" _Merde..."_ Alice whispered "They could kidnap more mammals, or assassinate other mammal versions of this Earth's heroes."

"This is worse than we could've imagined." Hill spoke, this briefing was producing more ill tidings than expected "I'll get all SHIELD satellites look for similar energy signatures that the New Jersey rift."

"There was something else on the drive, a list of targets to kill and another to capture people from this earth." Iron Man informed, before looking at Black Panther and adding "Shuri is at the top of the kill list."

"That's why Crossbones targeted her, it was Doom's order." Black Panther seethed "She is no longer safe in America, I will escort her back to Wakanda myself."

"Who else is on the list?" Snowguard asked.

"They're all scientists; Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Otto Octavius are some of them on the kill list with Moon Girl, Beast and Valeria Richards on the capture list." Iron Man answered, his worry clear on his face.

"Banner in danger!?" She Hulk gasped, worried for her cousin.

"They want to kill Pete!?" Spiderman nearly shouted, fearing for his mentor's safety.

"Moon Girl's only nine years old...what does Doom want with such a sweet kid?" Brawn fretted.

"Yeah, yeah we're all worried but does say anything about Tazerface and The Cauldron on that stick?" Rocket asked in an insensitive manner.

"Absolutely nothing." Iron Man answered, sounding annoyed.

"Well that's just fantastic! We've spent three days with our thumbs our asses waiting for you to crack that drive and give some info and now we've got jack shit to show for it!" Rocket raged, kicking over a desk lamp.

"We have got a lead." Ms Marvel corrected "We go to the targets, guard them and then when the bad guys come we beat them and make them tell us where the Cauldron is."

"Ms Marvel makes a good point, that is our only option at the moment." Captain Marvel agreed with her namesake.

"Then let's split up into threes, a member of each team goes together, that way we spread our strength and everyone's kept in the loop." Ghost Rider proposed.

"Since when did you become a team player, Reyes?" Riri smirked at the supernatural hero to which he just shrugged.

"Well I'm sitting this one out, I'm nowhere near ready to get back into my suit." Wasp breathed, clearly disappointed.

"And my concern is my sister, I'm afraid I can't assist you until I'm sure she's safe." Black Panther added.

"And I'll be back at the safeho-" Alice began to sigh but was cut off by the sound of a siren coming from the corridor halted her, all the lights the room began to flash red, she couldn't hide her smile, it was time to expose Hill.

"No!" Hill snapped, knowing exactly what had triggered the alarm.

Then a thundering wolf howl shook the entire base triggering Kodi to throw his head back and howl back "Awoooooooooooo!"

"What's happening?!" Captain America asked Hill.

But before Hill could lie Spitfire answered confidently "It sounds like a wolf, let's check it out!" before charging out of the medical bay with Team Ceartais and The Champions in tow, soon enough The Avengers followed leaving only Wasp and Maria in the room.

"What's wrong Maria? Guilty conscience?" Wasp asked smugly.

Maria looked back at Wasp and hissed "What did your team do?"

"No, Maria. What did YOU do?" Wasp slung back.

000

Arthur couldn't believe his howl had shattered the glass walls of his cells, but he had no time to marvel at the strength of his power, the glowing blue wolf knew he had to find a way to escape this place. He blinked his eyes a few times to adjust to the light of the room he found himself in but saw three strange looking creatures charging at him with electrified batons. Arthur wasted no time wondering what these creatures were and ducked as the closest enemy swung the baton at him, he then harnessed his power and propelled the SHIELD agent into a wall, knocking him out. "Where's my friends!?" Arthur growled, as he weaved and dodged the other attackers with ease when he got no answer he tapped into the energy surrounding the agents and slammed their heads together, sending them into a forced slumber. He was scanning the area for an emergency exit when he heard the familiar and terrifying sound of a handgun's safety being flipped off, as the gunshot rang out he spun round and outstretched his paw using his powers to stop the speeding bullet in mid air, Arthur let the bullet fall to the ground and snarled at the SHIELD agent across the room "I don't want to hurt you but if you don't tell me where my friends are I'm going to tear you limb from limb."

"Officer Knight!" A voice called out from behind him.

Arthur turned around and felt joy rise in his heart when he saw the familiar faces of Team Ceartais rushing through a set of security doors but also confusion when he saw that they were with the same weird creatures that had imprisoned him "Ceartais?" He mumbled, both relieved and puzzled.

Spitfire was the first to reach the still glowing wolf, put a huge mechanical hand on his shoulder and said "We've been looking for you officer."

"Are you hurt?" Luna asked, fussing over the wolf.

"A-aren't you one of Chief Wilde's daughters?" Arthur uttered, looking at the vixen dressed in Andraste's uniform minus the mask.

"...Shit, I knew I forgot something." Luna cursed, she and the others had gotten used to being lax with their identities in this dimension.

"Crap, crap, crap." Kodi panicked, fumbling his mask on while Kion transformed into his Roar form.

But as the team tried to quickly mask their alter egos bar Alice who was dressed casually, The Avengers stormed into the room with Captain Marvel demanding "What the hell's going on here!?"

Viv fazed into view beside Captain Marvel and quickly answered "Director Hill has been keeping one of the missing mammals captive."

Thor looked over at Maria who had just entered the room and bellowed "What treachery is this?"

"Hill keeping secrets again." She Hulk simmered, angry as her lover.

"The situation is more complicated than you think." Maria replied with a straight face.

Robyn, who was still without a mask, stomped over to Hill while shouting "No it's simple, you've been keeping an innocent mammal in a small cell with a god damn shock collar strapped to his neck!"

"Oh Maria, that's low even for you." Iron Man judged.

"This is illegal and immoral!" Captain America blasted, disgusted.

"Wait so who's the blue pooch?" Rocket asked, pointing at Arthur.

"This is Officer Arthur Knight, a Zootopia police officer, he's one of the mammals we've been sent to rescue." Alice answered the increasingly annoying raccoon.

Doctor Strange's eyes grew wide and asked forcefully "Did you say Arthur Knight!?"

Arthur was still being checked over by Luna and completely flummoxed by the situation he found himself in but replied anyway "Yeah...that's me."

Maria brushed by the angry Robyn and implored to Strange "Now you know why I kept him locked up, in case he's like this earth's Knight."

"Our Knight was innocent, it was you who labelled him a criminal!" Stange reacted.

"The research he was working on could've killed millions, I couldn't take the risk." Hill justified.

"Um, are we supposed to know what the heck you two are talking about?" Ms Marvel asked, everyone else in the room was growing more and more confused by this conversation but no more than Arthur.

Strange took a breath to calm himself and walked over to the baffled Arthur, he looked the wolf up and down and noticed the strange coat of arms that hung from chain around his neck "Another scholar of Seren."

"What?" Was all Arthur could muster in response.

Strange looked surprised that this wolf didn't know what he meant, he touched the strange pendant and said "Oh my canine friend, if you only knew what you are."

000

Away from the heroes, sinister plots and deceptions of the human earth, Zootopia was still gearing up for the holidays. This was the season that shops saw their biggest increase in business, even convenience stores like the one Jasiri owned. Once thanksgiving had been and gone she had decorated her store with Christmas and Hanukah decorations and been promoting festive products and she noticed that she was getting way more customers than usual and to be honest she was feeling exhausted from the amount of work she was having to put in at the store. So when the opportunity came up for the hyena to chaperone a field trip for her son's class, she saw it as an chance to relax and spend time with Mufasa and his classmates. The trip was to the Zootopia Grand Library, the largest library in the united states and was a joint field trip between three different elementary schools in Savannah Central and so far it was proceeding well but as lunch time approached a grumpy little hybrid began to question his mother. "But why has Dad gone away for training? He can train in Zootopia." Mufasa huffed, the hybrid was sat a table in the library's cafeteria, there were dozens of children and supervising adults in the room but Jasiri was sat in the corner with her boy.

"Because his 'Boss' said so." Jasiri half lied, Mufasa knew about team ceartais and to keep it secret so he knew wouldn't blab something incriminating.

"Can I call him then?" Mufasa stropped.

"Olivia is keeping your dad and his friends really busy, but don't worry they'll be back from the countryside in a couple of days." Jasiri fibbed, stroking her son's mohawk like mane.

"They're not in the countryside, they're in another world." A young voice pointed out.

Jasiri looked across the table to find a small koala boy eating from a snack bag of eucalypts leaves, looking at her and Mufasa with a smile on his face. "I'm sorry, what did you say?" Jasiri asked, stumped by the fact this child knew the facts of her boyfriend's mission.

"Team Ceartais are on another world rescuing mammals." Aaron clarified, still chewing on the leaves.

"Mom is it true!?" Mufasa asked excitedly, his eyes lighting up "Can I go help!?"

Jasiri ignored her son's questions and focused on the koala boy sat across from her and asked in a low volume "How do you know this?"

"Because my moms are The Undying Scarlet and Bullet." Aaron replied nonchalantly.

Jasiri let out a little gasp and realised "You're the little boy that Robyn and Hannah are adopting, the one with powers."

"Yep, that's me." Aaron gave a cheesy grin.

"You have powers too!?" Mufasa asked with an excited whisper "I'm super strong like my dad!"

"I know Mufasa." Aaron smiled.

"How do you know my name?" Mufasa asked, tilting his head.

"I read my moms' memories, I know that your dad's name is a lion called Kion and your mom is this nice hyena lady." Aaron showed off.

"You're psychic." Jasiri breathed, her mind blown by the boy, for years she thought the only super powered child in Zootopia was her son and now she was face to face with a powered marsupial.

"Kinda'." Aaron shrugged "I can move stuff without touching them and at school this morning I thought about my mom real hard and I could speak to her."

"Wait you spoke to one of your moms? Are they ok?" Jasiri asked, instantly believing the kid.

"Uh-huh and Auntie Alice is pregnant." Aaron answered, still joyous over the fact he was going to have cousins.

"Wait Alice isn't pregnant, she did a test, she told me." Jasiri shook her head, knowing her best friend would never knowingly put unborn kits in danger.

"Well she's having babies now." Aaron smiled "Five of them!"

"Alice and Luna are going to be mommies? That's so cool!" Mufasa cheered before saying to Aaron "Hey we should be friends, we both have powers and our parents are friends too!"

"Yeah!" Aaron grinned at his new friend.

Once lunch was over the hybrid and koala stuck to one another like glue, each of them sharing stories and speaking quietly about their powers with Jasiri close by smiling as she watched her son connect with someone who knew what it felt like to be different, to have powers. The hyena had a group of kids to watch over but kept on close on the two boys, she was determined to find out more about how Aaron spoke across dimensions and if he could do it again, she wanted to know if Kion was ok and if they had found any of the kidnapped mammals. The field trip was coming to a close and the last acitivity of the day was for each child to pick a book to check out and borrow "Sharks are so cool." Mufasa commented, flicking through a children's book about marine life.

"Aaron have you found a book you like yet?" Jasiri asked the koala, who looked to be having a tough time deciding which book he wanted to check out.

"Not yet." Aaron replied, picking up a storybook he thought seemed too babyish.

A young zebra girl walked up to Jasiri and tugged on her skirt and spoke timidly "Miss Outlander, I can't find my rucksack."

"Ok sweetie, let's go look for it." Jasiri said, taking hold of the girl's hoof she then faced the boys anc cautioned "Boys stay where the other grown ups can see you."

"Ok." The two lads chimed in unison.

As Jasiri went off with the little zebra, Aaron felt a chill run down his spine and heard a voice whisper " _Young warriors..."_

"Did you say something?" Aaron asked Mufasa.

"Nope." Mufasa responded, still looking at the colourful pictures of sharks.

" _Young warriors, come closer, they need your help..."_ The voice spoke again, it sounded gravely and tired, Aaron looked at Mufasa and saw now change of expression leading him to believe that he was the only one who could hear the voice. Aaron wasn't scared, he was curious of the voice, he looked around the room and suddenly felt drawn to a bookshelf across the room " _They need your help, please come closer..."_

Aaron felt like he was being pulled to the other side of the room as he walked over to the bookshelf and pushed aside the children's novels to find a book that had no business being in the children's section of the library; the book looked old made of worn brown leather bound by gold and silver clasps and locks and in its centre a strange coat of arms was adorned. The title seemed to be written in a strange language but Aaron spoke the title "The book of Seren."

"Hey watcha' looking at?" Mufasa asked, walking over to his new friend.

"This old book." Aaron held up the heavy tome.

"Whoa, that looks older than my grandpa Simba." Mufasa chuckled.

"It's a magic book, it told me to pick it up." Aaron smiled

" _Young heroes you need to pass on my words to the ones you call Ceartais..."_ The voice spoke again.

"Huh? It just spoke again." Aaron told Mufasa.

"What did it say?" Mufasa asked, having no trouble believing his friend.

"It said something about Ceartais." Aaron answered.

"Our parents' team?" Mufasa asked back with a scrunched up nose before guessing "Maybe this is to do with the rescue mission they're on, we could help them!"

"Then we'd be heroes to!" Aaron smiled but his smile faded as he no longer felt a magnetic pull towards the book or hear the strange voice.

"Yeah! Then they'll have to take us on missions with them." Mufasa schemed before giving a very hyena like laugh.

Jasiri walked back into the room with the little zebra girl looking cheery that she had her backpack back, she walked over to the two boys and asked "So Aaron, you found a book yet?"

"Yeah this really old one." Aaron replied, showing Jasiri the book.

Jasiri gave a quizzical look at the old tome and asked "You found this is the children's section? That title isn't even written in english."

"It's a magic book." Mufasa beamed.

Jasiri cracked a smile, assuming the boys were playing make-believe and played along "Oh well if it's a magic book then I guess you'll have to borrow it."

Ten minutes later all the kids had checked out their selected books the crowds of school pupils, teachers and chaperones were huddled outside ready to get back on the buses to return to their respective schools. "Here's the phone number to my apartment, ring up so we can go play." Mufasa passed Aaron a scrap of paper with a number scribbled on it.

"Really?" Aaron uttered, taking the number, feeling a little taken aback he had never been asked over to a friend's house.

"Of course, it will be great for you to come on a play date." Jasiri smiled warmly "And when your adoption paperwork goes through your Moms can bring you over any time."

"Thank you, Miss Outlander." Aaron reacted happily.

"Jasiri, can you start moving your group to bus number three?" A goat teacher called out.

"Sure, come on kids." Jasiri then started to usher her group towards the bus.

"So, I guess I'll see ya' later." Mufasa said, offering a fist bump to Aaron.

"Yeah, I'll call you later." Aaron smiled at his new friend, bumping the hybrid's fist.

Suddenly a loud bang from down the street made everyone in the crowd gasp, panicked murmurs rippled through the crowd as they all turned to see a battered looking jeep with a terrible flame style paint job speeded around the corner with two police cruisers in pursuit. A crazed looking Siberian tiger wearing a tin foil mask and a tacky costume was behind the wheel of the jeep, two sports bags overflowing with money were on the dash and in the driver's hand was a ZPD megaphone that he most likely stole " **You shall never catch Zootopia's greatest criminal mastermind; TNTiger!"** The mad mammal screeched through the megaphone, the costumed criminal then tossed aside the megaphone before fumbling a pair of grenades from his belt and throwing them out the driver's window aiming for the cop cars chasing him.

The first grenade missed and landed on the sidewalk and exploded next to a tall lamppost, the lamppost began to fall in the direction of an unaware Bengal tiger and hyena couple who were taking shelter behind a mail box. The second grenade found it target, hitting the front of the lead cruiser, the explosion sent the cop car flying through the air and towards the crowd of schoolchildren while the cackling TNTiger raced away down the street.

Everyone was screaming, everyone was panicking and foolishly every mammal was frozen with fear, except two. Out of sheer instinct Aaron and Mufasa sprung into action; Aaron dug deep and extended both of his hands using his telekinesis to stop the cop car in mid air before in crashed into the crowd of puplis and in the same moment Mufasa leapt towards the falling lamppost, he landed on top of the mail box and caught the post that was over a ton in weight before it crushed the tiger and hyena couple. "You guys ok?" Mufasa grinned, trying to act cool.

"Uh...yeah." The male spotted hyena gawped with astonishment while his baffled tiger boyfriend fixed his glasses not believing the spectacle of strength he was seeing.

There was amazed whispers from the crowd as Aaron used his powers to gently lower the car onto the road out of harm's way and the same reaction when Mufasa set down the heavy lamppost with ease. Mufasa was about to roar with celebration but was stopped by the angered shriek of his mother "MUFASA TIMON PRIDEROCK!"

"Uh oh." Mufasa uttered, knowing that he was trouble from the use of his full name and the angry crying face of his mom, who was running over to him.

Jasiri was in tears, grabbing her son by the shoulders and yelling "What the heck were you thinking!? You could've been killed!"

"...sorry." The hybrid replied timidly, feeling a torrent of guilt in his gut for making his mom cry.

"Ma'am, your son saved me and my boyfriend." The male hyena cut in, helping his love to his feet.

"He's a hero and so is that koala kid." The bengal tiger breathed, his heart rate finally slowing down.

Jasiri looked at her son, hugged him tightly and sobbed "You did a brave thing but it was really stupid, promise mommy you won't do that again."

"I promise." Mufasa mumbled back, feeling terrible for making his mom so upset.

Aaron looked back at the crowd, expected the other children to react the same way his fellow orphans did at the home when they saw his powers, he was bracing himself for mean names and funny looks but the little zebra girl from Mufasa's class yelled "Mufasa and Aaron saved us, they're super heroes!" The kids then began to cheer and whoop and howl in celebration, both Aaron and Mufasa were caught off guard by this, it felt new, was this what it felt like to be a hero?

The driver door of the damaged police cruiser opened, catching Aaron's attention and fear, he didn't want to be in trouble with the police but was relieved when a familiar face climbed out of the car; the dazed and slightly disoriented Chief Judy Wilde, she managed to smile at her grandson "Being a little hero again?", the doe knew should be a little angry, majorly worried and give both boys a scolding but she couldn't hide her pride, they were rebellious little dogooders, just like she was when she was a kit.

Aaron gave a cheeky smile and pointed at Mufasa "Not just me, Mufasa a little hero too!"

Judy winced a little, she was sure she had cracked a rib, she limped over to the powered koala and hugged him "Saving all these lives and mine makes you more than little heroes, you're junior heroes now." she jested.

"Junior heroes." Aaron repeated as he hugged Judy back, not knowing that this was the start of his and Mufasa's journey to becoming the new heroes of Zootopia.

(AN/ What did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW! Ok so this was a 'Set up' chapter, moving some plot points ahead so hopefully it wasn't too boring. Next time on The Broken Mirror; Strange tries to enlighten Arthur, the super teams head off to protect their target, Aleks' day keeps on getting worse and on The Cauldron Zoe attempts to figure out the reason Doom is keeping the mammals prisoner. Please review and c ya soon...)


	21. Two Hearts, Two Worlds

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. I can't believe we're already reached chapter 20, thank you to my wonderful dev team who have kept this story going on and develop the fiction's plot. I'd also love to thank the followers and reviewers who have been reading this fic and keeping the story alive. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 20- Two Hearts, Two Worlds**

Arthur needed a lot of convincing to be alone in an interview room with Doctor Strange, the blue furred wolf was still reeling from the revelations that he was on a different earth, that Team Ceartais had come to his rescue (and that both of Chief Wilde's daughters were in their ranks) but what he couldn't get over was the strange looking mammals known as humans. These humans had imprisoned him, had tortured him and a member of this violent species was behind the kidnapping of his friends. Arthur didn't trust a single one of these monsters no matter how much Ceartais told him that the majority of them were good, the only reason Arthur buckled into speaking with Strange was due to the insistence of Luna Wilde and his curiosity about what 'Seren' was.

Arthur deliberately sat in the chair that was closest door, so he could escape in case Strange tried anything. Strange was sat on the other side of the table studying the wolf opposite him, it was easy to see that Arthur was tense, frustrated and uncomfortable so the sorcerer tried a friendly approach "Well seeing as I know your name, I should tell you mine; I'm Doctor Stephen Strange." Strange introduced himself, extending his hand over the table for a handshake.

Arthur ignored the offered handshake and said curtly "I want to know how you know my name."

Strange took back his hand and sighed "Ah, yes. I suppose this is your first time travelling the multiverse, allow me to explain..."

"I know about alternate universes, I've seen enough sci fi shows to know the basics." Arthur cut in "What I want to know is how you know about me or at least the other me."

It was clear that Arthur was shaken by what was happening around but what he needed was direct answers, Strange obliged and answered, "The human version of you was a colleague of mine."

"He was a hero?" Arthur reacted with a question, wondering if his human counterpart shared his powers.

"No, he was very much an academic. You see as well as being an Avenger I am part of a society known as the Masters of The Mystic Arts, a talented group of scholars and magic users who gather knowledge from across the globe and protect humanity against dark magic." Strange briefly explained.

"Magic?" Arthur replied dubiously "Magic isn't a real."

"I beg to differ." Strange said with a straight face, waving his hand and making a fine china tea set appear out of thin air "Milk and one sugar, right?"

"...Y-yeah." Arthur stammered, stunned by what he just saw.

As Strange poured the tea he continued to explain "This earth's version of Arthur Knight was one of librarians and researchers of the London Sanctorum for two decades before relocating to the New York branch eight years ago to focus on a new research project,"

Arthur was confused by a lot of things, but the age of his counterpart didn't make sense "Wait, how old is your Arthur? I'm only 28."

"Let me think now, um, I think he was 58 when he died." Strange answered, sliding over the cup of tea to Arthur.

"Died? He's dead?" Arthur asked in a stressed manner.

"Well, murdered in fact. Murdered for the research he was working on." Strange answered, supping his tea, purposefully sounding casual despite the subject manner, he was gauging Arthur's reactions "He was studying the book of Seren, trying to unlock it's secrets."

"Seren, you said that before." Arthur said, the word seemed to echo in his mind, like it meant something important.

Strange read Arthur's face, assured that the wolf didn't know anything about his earth self's work but he was still suspicious of the canine's knowledge so he carried on "The book of Seren is a series of collected texts about the forces of the multiverse dating back to the middle ages, it is linked to the village of Seren on the English/Welsh border where a calamity from the night sky destroyed half the village some time during the 1200s."

There was a flicker of realisation in Arthur's eyes, he had heard this story before but instead of trying to remember the details of it he closed off his mind, instead focusing on Strange "So what's that got to do with other dimensions?" Arthur tried to redirect the conversation.

Strange could tell Arthur was deflecting, the story had sparked a memory in the wolf and the sorcerer wanted to make that memory to come aflame "I'm not sure of the exact link between multiverse and what happened at that village seeing as I never read the book of Seren myself but there is always a common element when anything event occurs around that book." Strange reeled Arthur in.

"And that is?" Arthur asked, ignoring his cup of tea.

"That coat of arms." Strange answered, pointing at the pendant hanging around Arthur's neck.

"W-what?" Arthur choked, instinctively gripping the necklace.

"The family crest of a dynasty sworn to research and protecting the secrets of the calamity, whose name has been lost to the ages so the family of guardian knights of Seren simply became the Knights." Strange pressured, observing the increasingly agitated expression forming on Arthur's muzzle.

"Well that's a fancy story from this universe, too bad it doesn't ring true where I'm from." Arthur dodged with an icy tone.

"You're a police officer where you're from, correct? So why are you using the same defensive bravado that a perp would use?" Strange poked.

"Maybe I'm being defensive because I'm on another bloody earth with no clue where my friends are." Arthur growled lowly.

"Or you're trying to distract from the fact that you do know what that pendant signifies, that you do know about your ancestry and you're trying your best to not to hear any more about it." Strange accused before pursuing "I can sense hearing my words is bringing back bad memories for you but denying it and keeping what you know from me and the others will only harm them and the kidnapped mammals you wish to save. You can't run from your powers."

Strange had struck a nerve in Arthur, he did his best not to bare his fangs but hissed "I'm not running from anything, I got powers when the purple cloud came to Zootopia."

"If you won't share your story with me at least share it with your fellow mammals." Strange bargained.

"This is my business, not theirs!" Arthur snapped.

"That's unwise." Strange stated, sipping his tea and giving Arthur a judging look "You'll need to work together with Ceartais and The Champions to save your friends and keeping secrets will only hinder your effectiveness as a team."

Arthur had heard enough, he didn't care about the history of his pendant, he only cared about what it meant to him "You want to know what this pendant is?" Arthur asked angrily, his eyes moist with a hint of tears "Every time I look at this god damn shield I'm reminded of how I got it and it still causes me heartache...it belonged to a wolf who was like a father to me, but he's gone now, and this is all I have left of him. So, you can shove your book of Seren, your multiverse research and all your theories about me up your arse." Arthur then stormed out of the room leaving behind a humbled Strange.

"Well that we well." Strange sighed sarcastically.

Arthur stomped back into the medical bay where the heroes and Hill were already embroiled in a heated argument "You should be locked up for what you did to Officer Knight!" Robyn seethed, staring up at Hill.

"I was acting in the interest of safety for this nation, I did nothing illegal." Hill responded, not intimidated by the furious hybrid.

"Pretty sure imprisoning someone innocent without charge breaks a few laws Maria, you went too far." Captain America waded in, his arms folded across his chest.

"It's illegal to imprison a human without charge but no laws concerning locking up an animal deemed dangerous." Maria replied, looking at Arthur, hoping to bait him into a fight.

"I'd love to show how dangerous I can be," Arthur spoke bitterly "but I've got more important things to do, like finding my friends."

"And Tazerface!" Rocket reminded, getting the feeling he was being forgotten.

Arthur paid no mind to the raccoon he didn't know and asked Luna "Do you have any leads, Dr. Wilde?"

"Kind of, we're about to split up and track some suspects." Luna replied.

"Good, I'll go with you guys then." Arthur reacted, looking at the heroes.

"I don't think that's a good idea." Luna shot down.

"But-" Arthur began to protest.

"You're exhausted from using your power, you haven't eaten properly in a while and you need a shower. You need to stay behind and recover before you can help in the search, doctor's orders." Luna insisted.

"You expect to stay here with that monster?" Arthur complained, pointing at Maria.

"No, you can go to the safe house with my wife and one of The Champions." Luna persuaded.

"I'm not going somewhere with these human-things...I don't trust them." Arthur admitted, causing some uncomfortable looks to ripple through the room.

"Then allow me to be the guard from The Champions, I am not a human." Viv stepped forward.

"Your voice...you're the one that saved me." Arthur realised, his eyes growing wide as he looked at the synthezoid.

"You should be thanking Bullet, she's the one who figured out you were here." Viv corrected.

Arthur turned to the gunslinger and promptly said "Thanks Bullet."

"No problem." Bullet chirped.

"Ok daylight's burning and we've got some targets to protect and bad guys to beat." Captain Marvel rallied, putting a hand each on Ms Marvel and Bullet's shoulders "We all have our assigned teams, stick together and have one another's backs."

"I must see to my sister's safe return to Wakanda, I wish you all luck." Black Panther said before exiting the room.

"Well Hill I'd say it's been a pleasure, but it never is with you." Iron man said smugly as he strolled out of the room with the rest of the heroes.

Once everyone was gone Hill looked at the bedridden Wasp and said, "You don't realise what you've done releasing that wolf."

"So, he has powers, from what I can see he's a good guy." Wasp parried, taking some grapes from the fruit basket by her bed.

"A good guy who doesn't even understand his powers can be more dangerous than any villain." Hill said, walking out of the room.

000

Back in Zootopia the major crimes bureau's latest case was growing bigger by the hour, after Lyla had called Jack to update him on the discovery of the murdered giraffe the striped rabbit had told Lyla and Aleks to meet him at another crime scene near the rebuilt Little Rodentia; another body had been found. Aleks and Lyla walked into a car body shop which worked on cars for mammals for all sizes, the agents noticed a distraught female mouse with ginger fur being comforted by two rodent cops at the entrance, they walked past them and the other cops to find a haunted looking Jack Savage looking at a small mouse corpse on a workbench. The mouse was covered in motor oil, he was wearing a mechanic's overalls and his open mouth was overflowing with oil, he had been drowned in it. "Sir." Aleks greeted, getting Jack's attention.

"I thought my wife told you to take some time off, Rojek." Jack pointed out, his eyes fixed on the corpse.

"I'm better if I'm at work sir, besides with the amount of bodies piling up, looks like you could use my help." Aleks countered.

"You're from the powered mammal division, not homicide." Jack said firmly.

"The powered mammal division also deals with 'weird' cases and nothing about these murders have been normal." Lyla butted in, hoping to help her boss.

"You can say that again...fine you can stay Rojek but don't draw attention to yourself if word gets out that you're here Skye will have me sleeping on the couch." Jack caved, feeling sorry for the silver fox.

"Understand, sir." Aleks nodded "So what's the story?"

"This body shop is owned by that crying mouse over there, Pepper Potts." Jack told, motioning to distraught mouse "Anyway her boyfriend was working late here last night and didn't come home, Pepper comes in this morning and finds her boyfriend's body here next to the oil can."

"What's his name?" Lyla queried.

"Tony Stark, been working here for the past few years, recovering alcoholic, no priors and no links to criminal organisations." Jack listed "The ZPD arrived and looked at the security cam footage and immediately called us; looks like the 'Monster' in the Andraste costume came here to kill this mouse...I don't know what the killer is or why she's dressed as a hero."

The default ringtone of Lyla's phone began to sound causing the otter to retrieve and say "I gotta' take this, excuse me a sec." She then walked off and answered her phone.

Aleks looked at the body and mused "All brutal killings, the murderer enjoys her work, but these mammals aren't selected at random, there must be something linking the victims."

"Well Basil Dawson from the ZPD has already updated me with some of the DNA analysis from the first crime scene, turns out the monster left a strand of her red hair at the scene, he says the DNA belongs to no currently living mammal." Jack informed, looking troubled.

"What does he mean 'Currently living'?" Aleks questioned.

"According to Basil the monster's DNA is that of a primate, a subspecies of mammals that went extinct millions of years ago." Jack answered.

"What?" Aleks nearly gasped.

"Guys." Lyla alerted, rushing back over "Just got off the phone with my snitch, I told him to ask around to see if there were any more sightings of the 'Monster'."

"And?" Jack asked eagerly.

"There was a sighting in The Meadowlands last night apparently two rich sheep siblings were both wounded with arrows last night near a casino." Lyla informed.

"If they were attacked last night why hasn't the ZPD informed us about it?" Aleks wondered.

"Because a snatcher gang got to their bodies first." Lyla said in a disgusted voice.

"Shit." Jack cursed.

"I'm sorry, what's a snatcher gang?" Aleks asked, he had specialised in SWAT and never focused on organised crime during his time in law enforcement.

"Body Snatchers; they're organ harvesters, they go around in ambulances pretending to be first responders, but they take dying or freshly dead mammals then harvest their organs to sell them on the black market." Lyla explained.

"I don't suppose your snitch knows where the gang operates out of?" Jack asked, praying that the sheep were still alive.

"Of course." Lyla smiled confidently.

The snatcher gang worked out of a funeral home in the Rainforest District known for hosting the funerals of mobsters, it didn't take long for Jack to get a warrant and assemble a team of agents to storm the place. The veteran agent would lead the assault from the back of the funeral home, through the embalming room where the harvesting was most likely to take place. Jack was poised at the back door with Aleks and Lyla backing him up, all of them had their handguns drawn, he checked the door to find it unlocked and could hear voices come from inside. He then spoke into his radio "Get ready to breach the front, team b in 3, 2, 1!" Jack kicked open the door and rushed inside yelling "MCB, put your hands up!"

"MCB! MCB!" Lyla hollered, aiming her gun at a jaguar holding a liver over the corpse of an aardvark.

"Hands up!" Aleks warned, levelling his gun at another snatcher who had dropped the cooler box he was carrying and quickly raised his hands.

The sudden bang of gunshot echoed through the room and zipped just over Aleks's head and into the wall behind him, the marksman reacted swiftly and fired two shots into his chest. Another snatcher appeared from the staircase and shot at Lyla and Jack, the otter dived behind an autopsy table for cover before popping out and shooting the snatcher square between the eyes. Jack saw the jaguar drop the liver and reach for a scalpel but before the feline could attack Jack shot him in the shoulder "That was a warning, next one goes in your skull!" Jack bellowed.

Aleks had his back to the open door of a body freezer and realised too late that there was a hare snatcher behind him, the hare dashed out and tried to wrestle the gun from Aleks' paws, the silver fox let out a roar of anger and kneed the hare in the crotch before shooting the snatcher in the head, covering him in blood. Aleks then screamed "Bastard!" before kicking the freshly dead body of the hare.

"Rojek." Jack warned.

But Aleks just snarled and carried on kicking the body.

"Rojek!" Jack shouted, marching over but Aleks was still kicking the dead hare over and over. Jack pulled Aleks away and blasted "Aleks stop!"

Aleks staggered back, panting, looking dazed, his eyes glossed over and muttered incoherently "Don't be a sourpuss...nothing's going to snow for a while anyway..."

"What?" Jack reacted, completely baffled by Aleks' words as more agents piled into the embalming room and began arresting the snatchers

"Jack, I found the sheep, they're both dead." Lyla said in a sorrowful voice, looking at the bodies on the other autopsy tables, their chests ripped open and their organs hollowed out. The otter then glanced at their belongings and found an open wallet, she could see a driver's licence belonging to the female sheep, her name was Sue Storm.

"Damn it..." Jack whispered before looking back at Aleks, who was in no fit state to work this crime scene "Rojek go outside and cool off, we'll be having words."

Aleks let out a snarl before barging out of the embalming room and out into the back alley, he was about to punch a wall in a rage but stopped before his fist could hit the bricks. "Zoe..." Aleks whispered, choking up. His trembling paw reached into his shirt and pulled out a set of dog tags that were hung around his neck, one tag belonged to him and the other was his wife's, the bat wore the matching set of tags even on missions. He kissed the tag with her name on and tried to steady himself, but it was hard when despair was dragging him under.

000

Even though Zoe was sat in the darkness, the faint glow of her tablet was lighting up the air duct enough, so she could look at the dog tags in her hand. The flying fox traced her thumb over the name of her beloved husband and whispered, "Don't you be a sourpuss now, don't be sad, I'm coming home." The soldier knew Aleks could be emotional when stressful situations arose, so she was dreading the thought of him freaking out of her kidnapping. Zoe wished she could tell him that she ok, that she could kiss him, that should could hold her twins in her wings, but she knew wishing was useless, if she was going to make it back home she would have to do it herself not wait for a miracle.

After escaping her cell one of the first things Zoe had done was try and find her equipment, she had found it in some sort of Maintenance room, her drones had been dismantled but her tablet was still working. The bat had tried to hack into the cauldron's security system, but the technology was completely foreign to her, she had no chance of cracking it. But she had started to notice something bizarre since she had broken out of her cell, she could feel when the doom bots were close by, she didn't know how but she could sense them. She could also sense where the security cameras were before spotting them, she had begun to wonder if her captors had done something to her. A rumble in her stomach dragged Zoe from her thoughts, she hadn't eaten since yesterday and she was famished, she needed to find where they stored the food but before she could even head off looking for the food stores the sound of whistling caught her attention; it was coming from a nearby vent cover. Zoe shuffled through the vent and peeked through the grate to find a lynx lying on a top bunk, whistling to herself and using her claws to sharpen the handle end of a toothbrush into a shiv. Zoe was puzzled by the fact that one of the kidnapped mammals was fashioning a weapon, but she was more interested by the sight of a pack of dried apricots that the lynx had beside her "Hey." Zoe whispered through the vent.

Esso stopped his whistling and looked around her.

"Up here." Zoe signalled in a hushed voice.

Esso looked up and instantly gasped "You're the soldier! You're Zoe!"

"Quiet." Zoe cautioned before adding "Yeah I'm Zoe."

"Clara told us about you, she said you escaped your cell. How?" Esso asked in a low voice, looking at the door to her cell to see if anyone was nearby.

"I...I don't know. I remember feeling angry, I wanted to get out and then it opened, just like that." Zoe recalled, her mind hazy on what happened.

"Just like that, huh?" Esso replied, "Well Clara thinks you have what it takes to get me and the other mammals out of here."

"I'm going to try." Zoe assured "Where is Professor Bloom? I need to speak with her."

"She's with Kurt near the engine room." Esso answered.

"Who's Kurt?" Zoe asked, intrigued.

"Some blue demon dude who's keeping us alive." Esso said, being coy.

"What?" Zoe squeaked.

"Go and see for yourself." Esso smiled.

"Ok...uh, look I know this is rude, but can I have those apricots? I'm starving." Zoe asked, her mouth-watering at the sight of fruit.

"Sure." Esso replied, slipping the snack bag through the grate "Come back later and give you a few pudding cups from my horde."

"T-thanks." Zoe said, stuffing the dried fruits in her mouth and munching them quickly before scurrying off in search of Clara. It took the soldier nearly half an hour to figure out where the engine room was, after a few dead ends she felt drawn to an area, it was calling to her. She didn't understand why but she knew she head in this certain direction, it was like the ship was telling her where Clara was.

Zoe moved silently under the metal grate floor listening to Clara chatting to someone she couldn't see "I think I've got it!" Clara said in an excited voice "If I can optimise the device that draws your power it will take less so you won't be strapped to that table all the time."

" _Tausend dank,_ Clara." A tired voice spoke "Just make sure there's enough power to keep the ship afloat, your kind must survive. "

"I told them about you, Kurt." Clara said, Zoe could see Clara mover away from the workstation and over to an operating table "They are thankful to you and they're rooting for you."

Zoe moved around in the floor compartment and had to hold in a gasp when she saw the face of Kurt, she thought she was seeing a demon, his skin blue and furless, his eyes yellow and his tail was pointed "Ororo would be ashamed of me if I didn't try my best." Kurt said, even though he sounded drained there was a hint of happiness that could be heard in his voice.

"Who's Ororo?" Clara smiled "She your sweetheart?"

"Ororo is my...friend." Kurt struggled.

"You hesitated." Clara grinned "Meaning you've got something for this female."

Kurt gave a weak chuckle before saying "You are sharp, Clara. But Ororo is a teamate of mine in the X Men, she's known as Storm, a powerful mutant who can control the weather."

"Who you've got a crush on." Clara bantered.

"Me and Ororo have danced the dance of love many times but something was always in the way of us...of us being together." Kurt revealed "How about you Clara? Do you have someone special?"

Clara's grin softened to a warm smile as she said "His name is Kodi."

"Ah, this a new love, I can tell. You speak like a smitten schoolgirl." Kurt teased.

"Am I that obvious?" Clara laughed softly "Yeah we just started dating but he gives me this feeling in my chest."

"It sounds like he has a hold of your heart." Kurt spoke surely.

"Just like Aleks has a hold of mine." Zoe spoke up.

Clara looked down through the floor grate and half shouted "Zoe!?"

"Don't look down, there's cameras in this room!" Zoe hissed.

Clara obeyed while Kurt asked, "Who is it?"

"She's a soldier from my world, she's a bat called Zoe." Clara said, making sure not to look down.

"Glad to see you're doing well Professor, who's your blue friend?" Zoe asked, looking at the creature with suspicion.

"It's hard to explain but he's a prisoner like us, his power fuels this ship." Clara answered, keeping her eyes on Kurt.

"He's powered? Like everyone else? Makes sense." Zoe figured "Look Clara we can't talk for long, we'll be noticed. The bots will figure out we're talking so tell me what you need me to do."

"I need you to look in the lower decks of The Cauldron, I'm betting whatever Doom has in store for us is down there." Clara instructed.

"Hold up, who's Doom?" Zoe asked.

"The asshole running this ship, some insane ego maniac." Clara growled.

"Right, I'll get on it." Zoe replied, "You keep the others' morale up, I'll figure out what this Doom guy is up to and how to get us off this ship."

"Good luck Zoe." Clara wished.

"I don't need luck." Zoe reacted "Now I have an enemy to fight." the seasoned soldier crawled through the floorspace, it was easier for her to move forward now, she had a foe to defeat and defeat them she would. Nothing would keep her from her husband and children, even it was Satan in the pits of hell.

000

"Look all I'm asking is that we just see Octavius." Iron Man tried to barter.

"Mr. Stark, Otto is safe and sound in solitary confinement with his books, no villain could get into there without us knowing." The Head Guard responded.

Iron Man, Iron Heart and Roar were at The Raft. A prison complex located on an artificial island floating in the middle of the Hudson river, this prison housed all the super powered criminals that had been brought to justice in New York City. This was the home of the long-time villain Dr. Octopus whose real name was Otto Octavius, a man with a brilliant scientific mind who had fallen into villainy and was a frequent foe of the first Spiderman. But in his last bout with the original webslinger he was brought to his knees in defeat and delivered to the district attorney of Manhattan and had no trouble giving him six consecutive life sentences for his continued tyrannical attacks across the city. And now, for some unknown reason, he was on Doom's kill list. Despite the fact he was a villain, the heroes had a duty to protect him and warn him of the danger he was in. Iron Man had used his connections to gain access to island and to the security office where the head guard was stationed, where all every cell in the prison could be viewed and the portly Otto could be seen on screen, sat at the little desk in his cell reading from a leather-bound book.

"Call me paranoid but I just want to see that the old bastard is all right." Iron Man weaselled.

"Sorry, Mr. Stark but rules are rules." The Head Guard replied with a sigh "I stick to the laws of this land."

Roar who was in his transformed form was getting some wary looks from the other guards in the room so the good-natured lion smiled "Hey, I'm Roar, nice to meet you."

"Uh...Jenkins." One guard stammered "Nice to meet ya'."

Iron Heart who had observed the exchange between the head guard and her mentor decided to manipulate the situation "You know Tony, I heard your fourth of july parties are epic."

Iron Man saw what his young protégé was doing and played along "Yeah, this year's going to be one for the record books. Pepper tells me she wants to break the record for the biggest firework display in America."

"Really?" The old head guard sounded "My grandkids love fireworks."

"Well you should bring them upstate to the Stark estate, I'm sure Tony would be happy to host your family at one of the guest houses." Iron Heart baited.

"Yeah, there's plenty of room. You could bring your entire family for the fourth of july weekend, my treat." Iron Man piled on.

The Head Guard was quiet for a second before saying "I guess you chatting to Otto won't be any harm."

"Thank you so much, I'll get Pepper to arrange your family's stay at one of the guest lodges right away." Iron Man smiled before winking at Iron Heart and Roar.

A few minutes later the heroes were being led down towards solitary confinement. Iron Man looked up at the thirteen-foot Roar and joked "So what's your story, Tiny? You some sort of hulk?"

"N-no, I was experimented on...the same thing happened to my big sister." Roar answered, not prepared for such a personal question.

"So Tiny here is the nice guy of the group, huh? I'm guessing that Robyn girl is the hothead and the magic wolf is the horn dog." Iron Man commented.

"Roar ignore Tony, he's just trying to get a reaction out of you." Iron Heart cautioned "It's sort of a defence mechanism of his; he's sees someone who intimidates him and in turn he makes fun of them."

"Oh..ok." Roar reacted, trusting Iron Heart.

"Riri, your words burn me. Why would I ever seek to make fun of a giant predator who could tear my throat at any given second?" Iron Man asked sarcastically "Fine, if I can't joke with Tiny, I'll focus on you; so, have you asked out Brawn yet?"

"T-Tony!?" Iron Heart stammered, caught unawares by the question.

"That's a no, then." Iron Man smirked.

"So your mentor ships you with Amadeus as well?" Roar smiled.

"You see it to, Tiny?" Iron Man laughed "That's it Riri, you gotta' make Brawn your man."

"Ugh, I hate you guys." Iron Heart said through gritted teeth, marching ahead.

"Um, maybe we should lay off." Roar said to Iron Man.

"Nah, Riri is bull headed sometimes you got to hammer the point home." Iron Man smiled at the lion "She's got it bad for tall, green and handsome but she won't accept it, that's why her friends are here to help her."

Iron Heart reached Otto's cell and instantly froze, a look of horror fell upon her face and she stuttered "Oh g-god."

Iron Man and Roar rushed to where Iron Heart was standing and found what had make the young engineer freeze with terror. Through the bars of the cell was Otto Octavius sat at his desk, with his body rooted in the chair but his head decapitated at the neck and left bleeding on the desktop. "We were too late." Iron Heart mumbled in a frightened voice, her eyes fixed on the pained death mask of the severed head. The heroes thought they were ahead of the game, but the villains had already made their moves, they could only hope that the other targets were safe.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! The villains already took out Doc Oc? Does Zoe have powers? Will Ceartais and The Champions save the other targets in time? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; we visit the X Mansion, Arthur tries to figure out the world he finds himself in and Andi makes her move. Please review and c ya soon...)


	22. Doom's will

(AN/ Hey folks,super quick update today because i'm feeling pretty ill and have been throwing up while writing this so as soon as I post this I'm going to crawl into bed and sleep for eternity. Thanks for your continued support so without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 21- Doom's Will.**

The mercenaries that Doom had hired possessed a large network of hideouts and armouries between them, with Ronin and Andi having the lion's share, the deadly duo had climbed up the rankings of top assassins among the world's intelligence agencies and more notably among super villains across the globe so they always needed a safe place to crash but the pair didn't have a place they called home...yet.

Ronin was sat a work bench in a storage locker not far from the Brooklyn Bridge, she was checking her sniper rifle in preparation for her target later that day when her encrypted smartphone vibrated on the worktop. It was a message from Taskmaster; he had successfully infiltrated The Raft and assassinated Otto Octavius without being caught, the merc had once been a prisoner at the facility and would've memorised the layout, guard patrol times and routes plus he was handy at messing with security systems, he would've manipulated the camera feed to show old footage of Octavius' cell before going in for the kill.

Ronin was about to get back to cleaning her rifle when her phone buzzed once again, she glanced at the screen and let out a small gasp when she saw who was calling. She grabbed the phone, placed it carefully on the ground and a holographic projection lit up the space. The hologram was of Victor Von Doom, in full armour sitting on his throne. Ronin got down on one knee and bowed her head "My lord Doom." she greeted formally.

"Rise, Ronin." Doom's hologram spoke, the white haired assassin did as she was told before the tyrant continued "I trust everything is going to plan?"

"All low level targets have been dealt with, m'lord." Ronin informed "All that remains are the super powered targets and the captures."

"That is good to hear, Doom is pleased with your progress so far." Doom replied.

"You honour me and my comrades, m'lord." Ronin answered, maintaining etiquette.

"And where is your lady wife?" Doom asked, sounding curious.

"In upstate New York, doing your will." Ronin answered, subconsciously stroking her wedding ring.

"Hmm, how odd. Doom was led to believe that you and your beloved worked on contracts as a team." Doom commented.

"I have a target to kill in your name today, the schedule conflicts so we must work apart this once." Ronin explained.

"Doom hopes that Andi does not give in to her 'Indulgences' without you to guide her, that would be a grave mistake." Doom warned.

"Andi knows what's at stake, m'lord. I promise you she wants to complete this mission as much as I do." Ronin promised.

"And you will get what you desire most; a home. A place where you and your wife can rest without having to look over your shoulder for foreign agents and bounty hunters." Doom reminded the killer of what awaited upon success.

"A-and the adoption?" Ronin asked, nervous that she may be overstepping her bounds with the ruler.

"You will have your choice of children to adopt from all orphanages across Latvaria once you become citizens and servants of Doom's homeland." Doom assured. "Keep Doom up to date with any developments."

"Of course, Lord Doom." Ronin bowed once more before the hologram faded away, she picked up her phone and saw the wallpaper photo of the home screen; it was a black and white photo of her and Andi kissing, she touched the screen and whispered "I'm doing this for you _mon amour_."

000

Spiderman had volunteered himself to check in on Peter Parker at his industry headquarters, when he had heard that his mentor was on Doom's kill list he was tempted to web sling to Parker industries at top speed but Captain America had cautioned the teen hero telling him that it was safer to stick together as a team. Andraste had opted to tag along with Spiderman and Captain America due to the fact that Parker Industries was not far from the SHIELD safehouse in case she needed to get back to Alice at short notice. Captain America was driving one of the SHIELD issue SUVs towards Parker Industries with Andraste in the front passenger seat and Spiderman in the back passenger seat. "Why do I have to ride in the back?" Spiderman whined.

"Because I called shotgun," Andraste grinned "and you're a kid."

"I'm sixteen." Spiderman huffed.

"Exactly, a kid." Andraste smirked, she glanced at Captain America expecting to see some sort of amused reaction but all she saw was a sideways glance of distrusting eyes, she wondered why this was, when they had spoke in Chinatown the old soldier seemed friendly enough. The vixen attempted to break the ice with "So is Captain America your real name?"

"It's Captain Steve Rogers." Captain America answered curtly, returning his eyes to the road.

"Well I'm Dr. Luna Wilde, nice to meet you Steve." Luna smiled but Captain America's face remained stony so she asked "Um, is there something wrong?"

"...I'm sorry. It's just when we first met I didn't realise who you were." Captain America said, sounding guilty "That your Andi's counterpart."

Andraste expected herself to feel sad that she was associated with her psychotic human self but instead found herself half growling "I'm not Andi, I'm Luna."

Spiderman who was feeling uncomfortable tried to defuse the situation "He didn't mean it, Luna. It was a mistake, right Cap?"

"I didn't mean any offence it's just I've crossed paths with Andi before, it's hard not be guarded." Captain America admitted.

"Ok apart from her being human and me being a fox from another universe you realise that Andi is a completely different personality, don't you?" Andraste parried.

"I'm aware that Andi is a violent personality that has dominance over the human Dr. Wilde and I also know you've had mental health issues similar to your human self." Captain America countered.

"I have my D.I.D under control, my wife, my family and my friends help me. I am not any version of Andi, I'm Luna." Andraste said with a simmering voice.

"Like I said, I'm sorry." Captain America added "It's just hard to switch off caution, especially after what happened in Singapore."

"What happened in Singapore?" Andraste asked, knowing she wouldn't like the answer.

"...It's best that I don't say but if you really want to know ask Maria Hill to introduce you to an agent codenamed 'Dragoness', she's an expert on the case." Captain America suggested as he pulled into the underground parking lot of Parker Industries.

Cap stopped at the security booth and rolled down the window so he could speak to the guard in the booth; he was a short elderly man who looked like he should've retired years ago, he wore tinted sunglasses and a neatly trimmed grey moustache, his name tag read 'Stan'. "Name?" Stan asked, seeming more interested in the crossword puzzle in the daily bugle.

"Captain America, Spiderman and Andraste; all here to see Dr. Parker." Captain America answered politely.

Stan glanced at his clipboard and then at Cap and sighed "Sorry buddy, your names' not on the list."

"Sorry about that, this is kind of an emergency, we need to see Dr. Parker right away." Captain apologised.

"Look pal, I can't let you in, how do I know you ain't up to no good?" Stan blustered.

"Oh come on, man. He's Captain America, he's the definition of good." Spiderman argued.

"He could be a hydra copycat, it's happened before." Stan shrugged "No appointment, no entry."

"Um, is everything ok here?" A voice asked. Everyone turned to see Peter Parker carrying a briefcase walking towards the security booth.

"Ah, Dr. Parker, these troublemakers were trying to get in without an appointment." Stan explained, motioning to the occupants of the SUV.

Peter walked over, put a hand on the old guard's shoulder and smiled "You did good, Stan. But these folks don't have to worry about an appointment, let them through."

A couple of minutes later the three heroes had gotten out of the car and explained the situation to Peter "Look guys, I appreciate the concern but you know I can handle myself." Peter spoke.

"We know that Peter, but just in case you should come with us to the Avengers compound, we can guard you better there." Captain America persuaded, his friendly tone make Andraste think the two were old friends

"My penthouse has some of the most advanced security systems on the planet, I'll be safe, don't worry." Peter replied.

"When has security systems ever stopped a bad guy?" Spiderman spoke up "Look maybe Crossbones, Taskmaster and Kraven have codes of honour but Typhoid Mary is insane and Ronin and Andi wouldn't hesitate using Mary Jane and Annie to get to you."

Peter looked at his protégé and tried to reassure "MJ is too smart to be manipulated like that and we both know Annie has inherited my 'Talents'."

"Dr. Parker with all due respect I doubt a scientist and his family could hold their own against some bloodthirsty killers." Andraste countered.

Peter look down and quietly replied "Well how about the first Spiderman, his awesome wife and their super powered daughter?"

"What?" Andraste reacted.

"Peter is a former Avenger, when he retired, he passed the mantle of Spiderman to a worthy successor." Captain America explained.

Andraste looked at Spiderman and commented "No wonder you two are so chummy."

Spiderman ignored the archer and implored "Pete, Annie is ten years old, she shouldn't have to deal with the possibility of being attacked in her own home. Look Iron Man has already called the guys at The Avengers compound to set up the guest rooms, just explain it to Mary Jane and I'm sure she'll understand."

"I retired from being Spiderman because of crap like this and now you want to drag my family back into it? Not a chance." Peter reacted.

"But they're not after the first Spiderman, are they? They're after Peter Parker and they'll try all methods to kill you, including going through your family." Andraste stated grimly.

"Listen to us, Pe-" Spiderman began to speak but both him and Peter tensed up, their spider senses felt a threat incoming from across the parking lot "GET DOWN!" Spiderman yelled at Cap and Andraste.

An expensive sports car exploded, engulfing the car and other vehicles around it in flames, shrapnel and glass were sent flying towards the group. Both Spiderman and Peter jumped to the ceiling to avoid the blast while Captain America quickly grabbed Andraste and raised his shield to protect both him and the vixen from the explosion. As the dust settled and all the car alarms in the parking lot screeched out, Peter and Spiderman dropped from the ceiling and Cap let go of Andraste "That was you car, wasn't it?" she asked Peter.

"Y-yeah." Peter answered, shaken.

Captain America was about to say something but his wrist communicator suddenly flashed up a message from Iron Man, he then grunted "It's Tony. Otto Octavius is dead."

"Otto?" Peter gasped, the two had been long time foes but he had held onto the hope that the villain could be reformed.

"Now are you ready to come with us?" Spiderman asked loudly over the car and fire alarms.

"...I'll call MJ." Peter answered, looking at the fiery wreck of his car.

000

Arthur felt lost, he was staring down at the streets of Manhattan through the window and could only feel bewilderment. This was another world he had found himself in, with strange creatures and unevolved mammals and somewhere in this dimension were the friends he had failed to protect. The wolf knew he should take a shower then get some sleep in a proper bed but he couldn't help but stare at this baffling and somewhat frightening world.

"Officer Knight?" Alice spoke, the blue furred wolf turned to see Alice holding a mug of tea up to the canine "I know it's a stereotype but I hear you British mammals always have a cup of tea when things go bad."

Arthur took the mug and smiled "Thank you, Mrs. Wilde. And it's Arthur."

"Then please call me Alice." Alice replied before adding "So does this place freak you out as well?"

"You have no idea." Arthur sighed, looking down at Alice and noticing her small baby bump "But I've got to ask, why are you here? Why would Andraste bring you here when you're pregnant?"

"Well we didn't know I was pregnant when we left Zootopia and I tagged along because I'm Yurei." Alice answered.

Arthur nearly choked on his tea before gawping "You're Yurei?"

" _Oui."_ Alice nodded.

"But you're not a ghost! Yurei's a spirit, she's got demonic powers, everyone knows that." Arthur babbled.

"I had those rumours spread around and I have no powers whatsoever, it's all theatrics and ninjutsu skills." Alice explained.

"So it's all a trick?" Arthur mumbled.

At that moment Viv phased through the front door of the apartment making Arthur jump with fright "I have checked the perimeter and we are free of all SHIELD surveillance devices." The AI heroine informed.

" _Merci_ Vivian." Alice said sweetly before saying to Arthur "We don't want Hill spying on us."

"Honestly she wasn't the best first impression of the human race," Arthur commented bitterly "And that Doctor Strange guy, wasn't much better."

"Most humans are nice, they're just a little different." Alice reasoned.

"You did appear upset when you emerged from your conversation with Strange, did he say something unsavoury?" Viv queried innocently.

"He opened up some old wounds, stuff I've done my best to forget about." Arthur answered, looking away and sipping his tea.

Alice could see a mixture of hurt and anger displayed on the wolf's muzzle, she hopped onto a nearby sofa and said "One can never truly forget the past, especially when it leaves a scar."

"You going to try and get me to open up as well?" Arthur accused.

"You'll confront your past when you're ready, no persuasion from me or anyone else will sway that." Alice replied, relaxing into the sofa cushions and placing her paw on her bump "But take it from someone who's dealt with her own demons, admit what happened to yourself, don't deny it or sugar coat it."

Arthur had no reply, he just continued to drink his tea and look out the window unaware that he was being scanned by Viv, more specifically his pendant. Viv's sensors were scrutinising the coat of arms and detecting some very strange things; it was made up of materials not found on earth but from planets outside the solar system, the inside seemed to house some sort of circuitry but what it did was a mystery to the synthezoid but what Viv most disturbing was the energy signature emanating from both the pendant and Arthur himself. She had seen the same signatures a handful of times when travelling the cosmos with The Champions leading her to believe that whatever Arthur's powers were they were not from earth and they weren't obtained through contact with the purple cloud.

000

"Kodi's going to be so jealous." Scarlet smirked as she rode in the backseat of the Hell Charger; Ghost Rider's muscle car as it sped through the quiet roads of Westchester county, New York towards their destination, Brawn was in the front passenger seat who was texting on his phone "This is a 69 Charger right? My Aunt Heather has one of these back home."

"This Charger is like no other, Red." Ghost Rider replied, back wearing his flaming skull helmet "This is the hell charger, and it's got a mind of its own and magic to boot."

"Sweet, demon car." Scarlet grinned with delight at the hellfire coming off the muscle car.

"Ok, I've texted Cyclops to say we're coming. The last thing we want is to show up at the front gate in a flaming car and have the x men attack us." Brawn said, putting his phone away.

"Cyclops?" Scarlet asked, assuming he was hero.

"His real name is Scott, he's a mutant who used to be a member of The Champions before re-joining the x men." Brawn told.

"Wait so is the version of Cyclops who in his forties or his teen time travelling self?" Ghost Rider asked casually.

"The time travelling one." Brawn answered.

"Ugh, there's time travel as well? This universe is so confusing." Scarlet groaned "Mutants, magic, inhumans, aliens and human versions of everyone."

"I keep forgetting that you guys are the only superheroes in your world." Brawn said, feeling sympathy for the hybrid.

"As soon as we rescue the missing mammals I want to go home and hug my son, that's all I want." Scarlet said, picturing Aaron's cute little face.

"Well as soon as we make one the villains squeal, we'll get you home to your boy." Ghost Rider willed, even though he looked a demon from hell he had a soft side to him.

The hell charger soon pulled into a long driveway where multiple security gates opened up as the charger approached, Scarlet assumed this place was some sort of military-esque base for the X men but was left stumped when she saw the sign 'The Xavier Institute of Mutant Education and Outreach' "Education? Is this a school?" she asked.

"Yeah, a school for mutants. Most mutants get a lot prejudice in civilian life so Charles Xavier converted his family's mansion into a school where mutants were free to be themselves and to learn without fear of bullying." Brawn answered.

"Plus it's got a kick ass bunker underneath that the x men call home." Ghost Rider couldn't help but add.

The Hell Charger parked up the charger in front of the mansion much to the amazement of the students, as the three heroes got out of the muscle car a boy in his late teens with short brown hair and wearing red sunglasses was coming out of the mansion waving at the three "Amadeus!" Scott greeted happily.

"If it ain't Captain Serious," Brawn jibed, high fiving the young mutant "you're settling into life back in the mansion, I see?"

"It's where I belong, Amadeus." Scott smiled "Anyway, what's with the new look? You hardly look like a hulk anymore."

"I sacrificed half my power for full control, it was worth it." Brawn replied.

"Well as long as you're ok, that's the main thing." Scott added before looking at Ghost Rider and Scarlet "So I'm guessing this isn't a social call seeing as you have an Avenger and some sort of rabbit heroine with you."

"Half rabbit, half fox." Scarlet cleared up, noticing the mutant's face crinkle with confusion "I'm The Undying Scarlet and yes we're here on business."

"Man, I've always wanted to visit this place, I mean all the legends worked out of here; Professor X, Ice Man, Wolverine, Storm." Ghost Rider said, looking at the mansion with awe.

"Well Storm is the principal of the school now," Scott answered "she's actually asked to see you all, if there's a problem you need to tell her."

"We're kind of against the clock here Scott, we really need to see Beast." Brawn tried to sway.

"Sorry Amadeus, rules are rules and Storm doesn't take no for an answer." Scott said, scratching the back of his head.

"Wait, we can meet Storm!?" Ghost Rider exclaimed, his excited manner not matching his fiery skull helmet.

"Sure, follow me." Scott invited, walking back into the mansion with an excited supernatural being in his wake while Scarlet and Brawn exchanged tired looks.

The trio were led through the beautiful building to the third floor where the principal's office was located, Scott knocked the door and a voice answered "Enter."

Scott opened the set of double doors to the spacious office adorned with antique furniture, stood by a bookshelf was a tall and slender black woman in her forties, she had a gentle face and long flowing hair that was snow white, she looked over at the group had just entered "It's not everyday we have both an Avenger and a Champion visit us." she spoke.

Ghost Rider scurried over and offered his hand to Storm, who politely shook it "It's really something to meet ya' Storm, I mean Ma'am." he fumbled.

"Likewise, Mr. Reyes." Storm smiled, unknowing of the joy Ghost Rider was feeling at one of his idols knowing his name. Storm then walked over to Amadeus and shook hands with the tall green genius "A pleasure to meet you Mr. Cho, Scott speaks very highly of you."

"Thank you, Ms. Munroe." Brawn replied, resisting the urge to skip to the matter at hand.

The principal then made her way over to Scarlet and said "And I can't say that I'm familiar with you, my dear. Are you mutant or inhuman? We welcome everyone at this school."

"I'm neither. I'm Scarlet, an actual sentient mammal and we're here to stop one of your team from getting kidnapped." Scarlet cut the formalities.

"Kidnapped?" Storm nearly gasped before saying to Scott "Please fetch Laura and Piotr, the heads of security need to hear about this."

"On it." Scott replied before dashing out of the office.

"Tell me everything." Storm instructed.

By the time Scott had returned to office, the trio had explained the situation to Storm. Scott walked back into the office with a pale six foot ten man and a short athletic brunette woman in tow. "What's up, Ororo?" Laura asked in a blasé manner, she was dressed in a black tank top with matching leather trousers.

"Cyclops mentioned something about a kidnapping." Piotr said in a stoic voice.

"Doctor Doom wants to kidnap Beast." Storm said, swiping at her tablet.

"Whoa, hold up. What?" Laura questioned, growing a lot more concerned instantly.

"But why? Hank has not made an enemy of that monster." Piotr asked, the muscle bound man spoke with a Russian accent.

"We don't know but Otto Octavius has been murdered and Peter Parker was nearly killed in a car bombing, we can't take any risks. He needs to be evacuated to the Avenger compound." Storm relayed "Which class is Beast teaching now?"

"Biology in the 'Carson' lab in the east wing, Gabby has a lesson with him now." Laura fretted, her calm attitude disappearing.

"Let's go." Storm ordered, marching out of the office leading the others to the school's lab. The group made sure not to run as not to panic the students who were piling out of the classrooms for afternoon for lunch, there were a few excited faces among the students upon seeing Ghost Rider and Brawn and a couple of them asked for selfies but the heroes had to politely decline. They made it to the Carson lab which looked like any normal school laboratory and found that only two people were left inside, one was a girl in her early teens who bared a striking resemblance to Laura and the other was blue furred man with an ape like frame, pointed ears and a few sharp teeth poking out from his mouth, he would've looked intimidating if it wasn't for the tweed suit and round glasses resting on his face.

"Gabby, this is the third time I've had to confiscate your phone during class." Beast sighed, holding onto a phone.

"Oh come on, Dr. McCoy, it's not like my grades are bad." Gabby pouted, Scarlet even noted that the girl and Laura shared the same accent, apart from the age gap the only notable difference between the two was a few scars on her face.

"That may be, but if you want to be 'Honey Badger' of the X Men, you'll have to learn to pay attention." Beast lectured.

Scarlet let out an audible snigger and commented "Seriously what is it with heroes in this dimension calling themselves after other mammals, first I meet some guy called Black Panther and now Honey Badger?"

Beast and Gabby looked around and saw that they weren't alone, Gabby's eyes lit up when she saw Scarlet "Bunny!" She squealed, skipping over and crouching down "You're the cutest little thing I've ever seen!"

"Um, Honey Badger, don't call her that." Brawn cautioned before whispering "It's like racism to bunnies."

"Oh sorry." Gabby quickly apologised.

"Um, is there something the matter Ororo?" Beast asked "Usually when other heroes show up, it's a bad sign."

"I'm afraid so, Hank." Storm replied, she then looked at Gabby and "Head to recess, Gabby. We need to talk to Beast in private."

Gabby nodded and sneakily snatched her phone out of Beast's hands before swiftly exiting the room "And we're going to talk about this 'Phone' stuff later." Laura shouted after.

"Sister?" Scarlet guessed with a smile.

"More like a clone but yeah she's my little sister." Laura answered.

"There's clones in this world? This just keeps getting better." Scarlet mumbled and rolled her eyes.

"Let's get back to the matter at hand." Storm said in a commanding voice before addressing Beast "Hank, the Avengers and Champions have uncovered a plot of Doctor Doom's to kidnap you and other scientists."

"Oh my, stars and garters." Beast gasped, taking off his glasses "How on earth did you uncover this?"

"Iron Man hacked into a device stolen from one of Doom's henchwomen." Ghost Rider answered, trying to keep his star struck nature at bay.

"And Doctor Octopus has already been killed and Peter Parker just had an attempt on his life." Brawn said, adding to the urgency.

"...Then we can't risk an attack on the school." Beast lamented.

"I've already put Negasonic and Yukio on perimeter guard, they will radio if anything is amiss." Piotr said, trying to ease Beast's worries.

"But we got to get you out of here, ASAP." Laura enforced.

"Exactly, The Avengers have offered their compound as refuge." Storm said "We can fire up the Blackbird and have you there in no time, I wish there was another way but-"

"Fret not, Ororo. The safety of the students is our top priority, besides I can catch up on some reading while I'm at the compound." Beast said, trying his best to be positive.

" **Colossus, come in!"** A stressed voice buzzed from the walkie talkie on Piotr's belt.

Piotr unclipped the radio and spoke into it "What's wrong, Negasonic?"

" **We've got an intruder on the playing field, she has hostages!"** Negasonic answered with angry voice.

The group shared a frightful expression before Piotr answered "We're on our way, don't make a move until we arrive!" As he spoke his normal skin vanished and was replaced with shiny metal.

"X Men, move!" Storm ordered, now floating off the ground before flying out of the room with the others racing behind her.

When they got outside they ran around the corner to the playing fields where the students usually hung out during lunchtime but instead students were rooted to the spot with fear; there parked on the field was some sort of aircraft with it's hatch door open, and in front of it were three Doombots with their vibration cannon arms pointed at a group of students who were on their knees, huddled together and sobbing. "Shit." Scarlet cursed as the group stopped beside a shaven headed young woman and an Asian woman with dyed pink hair both wearing uniforms sporting the 'X' symbol of their team.

"Negasonic, Yukio, where's their ringleader?!" Storm asked, her voice rumbling with anger.

"Right here." A snide voice sang, everyone looked to a bench where a rather chilled Andi was sitting on a bench, peeling an apple with one of her daggers "You know I was honestly surprised that your system didn't detect my stealth jet, I thought this was like the safest school in the world."

"You!" Scarlet hissed, baring her fangs and exposing her claws.

"I don't know who you are but you have made a fatal mistake coming here." Storm simmered, the clouds above becoming dark and her eyes becoming as white as her hair.

"Easy weather lady," Andi warned "you lay a finger on me and you're going to see the insides of those kids' skulls."

"Now you know why we couldn't attack." Yukio spoke, unable to tear her eyes away from the terrified students.

"You did the right thing, both of you." Piotr assured his two apprentices.

"So the coward who got her ass handed to her by my sister decides to skip the fight and uses kids as a shield? Pathetic." Scarlet spat.

"Let me get this straight; the vixen is the mommy's girl and you're the furry version of my sister? Damn that threw me when I first heard your voice." Andi mused standing up from the bench, chewing an apple slice.

"Fyi, the human version of me hates your guts too." Scarlet sniped.

Andi ignored the jibe and carefully placed the half eaten apple on the furious Negasonic's head "Hold still, cutie." she teased.

"I'm going to tear your ginger little head off." Negasonic seethed, holding back her instinct to attack.

"Aww, and I thought this school welcomed all mutants." Andi feigned disappointment.

"Mutants who want to use their gifts for good, not assassins like you." Laura replied.

"That's rich coming from one of the Wolverines, I mean seriously you adamantium assholes have more blood on your claws than most villains." Andi snorted.

"Enough of this foolishness." Beast spoke up "It's me you want."

"Oh Dr. McCoy, so noble and predictable." Andi smirked "Yes, my employer wants you to get onto that jet like a good little boy, some Doombots are already on board to secure you in, chop chop now."

Beast looked over to his teammates and said "I'm sorry, I have no choice."

Even though Storm looked powerful and threatening, her eyes betrayed her showing her sorrow "Hank, no...we've already lost Kurt, we can't lose you too." she said.

"Hank, we're not going to let this slide, we're going to rescue you." Laura promised.

"Yeah, cos' you've done such a great job rescuing Nightcrawler." Andi giggled darkly.

There was a rumble of thunder that echoed through the sky before Storm spoke "What did you say?"

"Oh, did I hurt a nerve?" Andi smiled.

"Do you know something about Kurt?" Storm asked through gritted teeth, Andi could feel the static energy emanating from the woman and she couldn't deny that it scared her.

"Ororo, calm yourself, think of the little ones." Piotr implored.

"...Right, the children." Storm panted, it was painful for her to hold back, especially when she saw the fear in Andi's eyes

"Ok Beast, time's a wastin, get your blue ass on that jet." Andi hurried along, wanting to get away from Storm as fast as possible.

"We'll see each other again, my friends." Beast said solemnly before walking towards the jet.

The band of heroes felt powerless, for all their gifts and talents they couldn't raise a finger against the twisted archer. Andi was halfway to the jet when she stopped in her tracks "Oh I forgot my apple," She said in a sly voice, turning around and drawing an arrow and aiming it at the apple on Negasonic's head "don't worry I'm an expert at the William Tell trick shot."

"Ellie!" Yukio gasped, worried for Negasonic's welfare.

"Yukio, don't move, we can't risk the bots attacking the students." Negasonic responded in a steeley voice "She's just playing with us."

"Atta' girl, now stay still." Andi said.

Scarlet felt a surge of alarm when she saw the arrow Andi was aiming, it wasn't a normal pointed arrow or a sleeper, the arrowhead was sphere shaped and glass with a blue liquid sloshing inside it "Wait-" was all Scarlet manage before Andi let the arrow fly, the arrow didn't hit the apple it hit Negasonic square in the forehead, the blue liquid exploded and sank into her skin.

"Arrrrgh!" Negasonic screamed, crashing to the ground in agony.

"Negas-" Laura yelled but was cut short when one of the blue arrows hit her arm, another flew at Yukio but Piotr shielded her with his body before falling to the floor with a pained groan.

"Get the students inside now!" Scarlet bellowed at Storm, in the corner of her eye she could see Andi running for the jet.

"What's wrong with them?!" Storm asked in a mix of anger and panic.

"It's night howler, they're are about to go into a rage, they'll be savage!" Scarlet answered, pulling the crying Yukio away from the writhing Negasonic.

"Storm put a vortex around us until we can restrain them!" Ghost rider quickly formed a plan, producing his fiery chain from his belt.

"What about you!?" Storm reacted, taking Yukio from Scarlet's hold.

"We can handle it...I think." Brawn said, locking eyes with Piotr who was slowly rising to his feet.

Storm flew back towards the mansion with Yukio in her arms and in an instant a swirling vortex of rain and wind surrounded Scarlet, Brawn, Ghost Rider and the enraged X Men. Without warning Negasonic let out a scream and uppercutted Ghost Rider with a sonic punch sending him ten feet into the air, Collosus charged at Brawn and the two immediately were grappling and trying to overpower each other. Scarlet looked at Laura and wondered what her power was, the brunette gave a very predatory snarl as two long claws emerged from each fist "Crap." Scarlet uttered before running at Laura with her own claws out, both of them screaming like banshees as the bloody battle began.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! What did you folks think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! This chapter was dedicated to the late Stan Lee who passed away last week, so I added a little cameo in his memory, thank you Stan for making true believers out of us all EXCELSIOR! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Scarlet taps into her savage side, Kodi gets on the wrong side of Doctor Strange and Clara discovers that one of her fellow prisoners is not what they seem. Ok I'm going to bed now so please review and c ya soon...)


	23. Howls, Cries and Kicks

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewe with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. I want to thank all the lovely folks who liked, commented, faved, followed, reviewed and reblogged the last update. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 22- Howls, Cries and Kicks**

Storm flew back towards the mansion with Yukio in her arms and in an instant a swirling vortex of rain and wind surrounded Scarlet, Brawn, Ghost Rider and the enraged X Men. Without warning Negasonic let out a scream and uppercutted Ghost Rider with a sonic punch sending him ten feet into the air, Colossus charged at Brawn and the two immediately were grappling and trying to overpower each other. Scarlet looked at Laura and wondered what her power was, the brunette gave a very predatory snarl as two long claws emerged from each fist "Crap." Scarlet uttered before running at Laura with her own claws out, both of them screaming like banshees as the bloody battle began.

Scarlet tried to be smart and use her smaller size against the mutant, she tried to skid between her legs but as soon as she began to slide two metallic claws ripped through Laura's boots and she kicked Scarlet with her left foot, with the claw imbedding itself under the heroine's armpit. Scarlet let out a roar of pain but kept her focus, Laura tried to slash Scarlet with her hand claws but the super mammal used her large feet to kick the mutant in the gut and off her onto the gravel, Scarlet didn't let up and jumped on top of the floored Laura and delivered a brace of punches but it felt like she was punching concrete, she could also see the small cuts caused by her punches already sealing up "You can heal too!?" Scarlet panted.

Laura recovered from her momentary daze from the super strength punches and immediately plunged her claws into Scarlet's abdomen, blood poured from the fresh wounds as Scarlet shouted "Shiiit!" at the top of her lungs while Laura stood up lifting the hybrid with her claws.

"Holy crap! Are you ok!?" Ghost Rider hollered, dodging a sonic blast from Negasonic.

"She's not the only one who heals quickly!" Scarlet snarled, she then used her claws to swipe at Laura's face furiously, ripping through the flesh, staining the ground with her blood but it was only when Scarlet's sharp predator claws ran across Laura's eyes, bursting her eyeballs and causing the savage mutant to throw Scarlet to the ground while her eyes regenerated. Scarlet didn't wait for her wounds to heal up she shot up and kicked Laura under her chin causing her to fall back. In the corner of her eye she had noticed that Brawn had got Piotr into a sleeper hold and realized she'd have to do the same to Laura, the only way to take out a someone with a healing factor was to knock them out. Scarlet dashed over and went to put Laura in a sleeper hold but just as her arms snaked around her neck, Laura claws shot up and sliced Scarlet's left forearm clean off. Scarlet erupted with a scream but was silenced when Laura's other claw pierced under her chin, straight through her brain and out the top of her skull.

"SCARLET!" Brawn bellowed, dropping the now unconscious Piotr, truly believing that he just witnessed Scarlet's demise.

"Oh god no..." Ghost Rider uttered, still struggling to reign in Negasonic who had been lassoed with his firey chain.

But within a heartbeat Scarlet's body began to convulse, Laura retracted her claws and stepped back before sniffing Scarlet's trembling corpse in a very animal like manner, suddenly the heroine's dead eyes narrowed and a bloodcurdling shriek burst from her mouth. Scarlet leapt at Laura and sunk her fangs into the mutant's neck and then with one powerful tug, ripped out her throat before letting out a bunny like scream.

"Fuck!" Brawn gasped, horrified by the gruesome scene; the savage Laura was flailing in a panic and gargling on her own blood.

"Is that Night Howler stuff contagious!?" Ghost Rider exclaimed, upping the flames around Negasonic, trying to knock her out.

"I...I d-don't know." Brawn babbled.

Still in her undead frenzy Scarlet used her remaining hand to grab Laura by her hair and slammed her head into the floor with her enhanced strength, then again and again and again. "Brawn stop her, I don't think Laura can take much more!" Ghost Rider ordered.

"Right." Brawn breathed, trying to psyche himself up to fight his friend.

After the fourth strike of Laura's head she had finally been forced into unconscious and as Brawn slowly stepped closer to Scarlet she let go of Laura, lowered her head and groaned "Owww..."

"Robyn?" Brawn asked cautiously, unsure of what had just happened.

"Amadeus?" Scarlet winced, her various wounds closing up, her tired eyes focusing on her severed arm and asking "Do me a favour and pass me my arm, will ya?"

"Uh, sure." Brawn obeyed, grossed out by picking up the arm and Scarlet's blood stained mouth.

"What the hell was that? We thought you'd gone savage to." Ghost Rider asked in a stressed voice, tying up the drained Negasonic.

"When I 'Die' my nanomachines put me into survival mode, they make me regress to primal instincts but also boosts my speed and strength." Scarlet explained, relieved to see that Laura's throat was already healing and that her breathing was steady.

"That's insane." Brawn reacted, knowing how complex nano bots were personally.

"So how long does Night Howler last?" Ghost Rider queried, looking at the defeated X Men.

"It needs an antidote." Scarlet answered in a tired manner, taking her severed arm from Amadeus.

"Please tell me you guys have it." Brawn asked.

"Of course, Alice is our poison master, she always keeps some antidote on her." Robyn replied, holding the end of her chopped off forearm to her still bleeding stump and letting the nanomachines reattach the bone, sinew and skin.

"Damn, that's gross." Ghost Rider commented, stunned as even the fur on Scarlet's arm regrew.

Suddenly the vortex of wind and rain relaxed and a panicked Storm descended from the sky "Are they ok!?" she nearly shouted.

"They're fine, just knocked out." Ghost Rider assured.

"But they need the Night Howler antidote, I'll call Viv and tell her to get it from Alice." Brawn added, getting out his phone.

"Are your students ok?" Scarlet asked the principal with a pained voice.

"They're safe," Storm sighed, landing on the ground and crouching by the slumbering Piotr "but Hank is gone."

"We'll get him back, Storm." Ghost Rider said with conviction.

"That bitch won't get away with this." Scarlet managed a very weak growl, picturing Andi's smug face.

"I share your disgust, but something else is troubling me." Storm said, tears forming in her eyes "Andi mentioned Kurt, what if Doom has him?"

"Who's Kurt?" Scarlet queried while wiping Laura's blood off her muzzle.

"Someone I..." Storm hesitated before answering "Someone I love and if Doom has harmed him then may the gods have mercy on that tyrant."

000

Of all the targets on Doom's capture list, the one that caused the most concern was Lunella Lafayette AKA Moon Girl, the inhuman super genius. She was the youngest hero currently active in the super hero community and no one could deny that she was the smartest person on planet earth despite being only nine years old. Doctor Strange had made her way to Moon Girl's family apartment with Snowguard and Mage tagging along but only found her parents there, Strange quickly explained the situation and surprisingly they took it rather well, citing that this sort of stuff was normal for them. Mr and Mrs Lafayette began to pack their bags for their evacuation to The Avengers compound and told the heroes that their daughter was at the park around the corner playing with her 'Puppy' with Mage being left confused by the use of quotation marks and disturbed by the fact that Moon Girl apparently owned an infant wolf. The trio of heroes left the apartment and got into the elevator, as they stepped in Snowguard asked "So how come we don't just use that magic portal thing to go to the park?"

"Those portals take a lot of energy to conjure and if we just appeared in the play park out of thin air we would likely scare the children playing there." Doctor Strange explained, pressing the button for the ground floor.

"I've gotta' say that portal you made with your ring was one of the coolest things I've ever seen." Mage complimented.

"That's basic teleportation magic, surely you've mastered such rudimentary skills Mage." Strange replied, arching an eyebrow.

"Me? Nah." Mage waved off.

"But you're a Mage, ah you must be a user of elemental magic or are you a vessel of ancient power like Snowguard?" Strange asked in puzzled manner.

"I can't use magic, not like you guys." Mage answered.

"What? But your name?" Strange asked, flabbergasted by the truth.

"Magic doesn't exist in Zootopia, I was the first magic user he met." Snowguard clarified.

"But your talisman cards, your wand, your magic shield..." Strange listed, sounding a mix of baffled and irked.

"All technology that Spitfire developed, you see I used to do magic tricks and..." Mage tried to enlighten.

"Enough!" Strange silenced the wolf "You dare call yourself a mage when you made a mockery of our skills and art for simple parlour tricks."

"Hey dude, relax." Mage tried to calm Strange down "In my world there in no magic so..."

"Magic exists across all multiverses and realties!" Strange interrupted "You're just not worthy of the power so you pretend to be blessed with gifts and play the hero."

Mage had enough of being insulted and got in Strange's face and replied in a sure voice "I don't play the hero, I am a hero, just like my friends."

"No you're just a big kid with fancy toys, that's all you are." Strange parried just as the elevator arrived on the ground floor.

"Guys stop it, we have to find Moon Girl." Snowguard reminded, grabbing Mage by the arm and dragging him out of the elevator before the argument got more heated.

"R-right." Mage steadied himself, Snowguard was right; they needed to focus on the mission.

"We should send this pretender back to the safehouse, it's not like he'd be any decent in a fight anyway." Strange barbed.

Mage felt like yelling an insult at the sorcerer but resisted and walked out of the building and onto the street causing Snowguard to sass "Is being an arrogant jerk your default setting or something?"

"Oh please Amaka, how can you entertain that fool?" Strange snorted.

"Mage may not have powers but he pulls his weight, he went toe to toe with Taskmaster and came out on top." Snowguard told, poking her finger into Strange's chest "And seeing as this is a personal mission for him, try to show some respect."

"Personal mission?" Strange replied.

"One of the missing mammals is his girlfriend." Snowguard revealed "Any normal person would be freaking out but not Kodi, he's keeping it together for Clara."

Strange's stoic expression didn't change but he did back peddle his words "...I didn't know."

"Well now you do, so got out there and apologise." Snowguard huffed.

Strange was about to respond but the sound of screams from outside snagged both his and Snowguards attention, Mage poked his head through the front door and yelled "Guys, we've got trouble."

Strange and Snowguard hurried through the lobby and out onto the street where they could see a stream of people screaming and running away from something around the corner "Let's go!" Mage rallied, running towards the chaos with Snowguard and Strange following. The group dodged the fleeing civilians and when they turned the corner they were met with an extremely bizarre sight; Typhoid Mary was stood on top of a yellow taxi launching fireballs at young black girl who was speeding around the street on rocket powered roller skates with one red boxing glove on her hand, she was wearing a homemade costume cobbled together with yellow shorts and braces, a grey t shirt with a full moon printed on it, a yellow boxer helmet and a vast array of gadgets, her long black curly hair was bunched together in two pigtails and her mischievous brown eyes were covered by a pair of yellow goggles. But that wasn't the strangest aspect of what the heroes were seeing; in the background was a bright red t-rex with eyes that were actual flames fighting a dozen or so Doom bots. "That's a freaking dinosaur!" Mage exclaimed.

"That's Devil Dinosaur; Moon's Girl's 'Puppy'!" Snowguard shouted an explanation before transforming into a werewolf like creature with antlers and charging at Typhoid.

"Ugh, I hate party crashers!" Typhoid snarled before backflipping to avoid a swipe from the transformed Snowguard.

"Don't forget about me, butt-face!" Moon Girl teased, she then triggered her extending boxing glove and clocked Typhoid in the kisser.

"Miss Lafayette, please come with us." Strange spoke, opening a portal beside the girl.

"I'm not going anywhere whilst Devil Dinosaur is in trouble!" Moon Girl defied, zipping by Strange with her rocket skates.

"But-" Strange began to protest.

"You heard the young lady, help the dinosaur!" Mage butted in, taking out his wand and remote hacking one of the Doom bots and making it fight it's fellow machines.

Snowguard had transformed back to her human form and was firing energy blasts at the athletic Typhoid, the insane mutant knew she had to get the magic user off her back so shot a fireball from her palms at a deli where people had taken shelter, the shop front caught fire and the panicked patrons began to scream. "No!" Snowguard yelped, running to rescue the civilians.

"That was a dirty trick!" Strange blasted, flying at Typhoid with his two orange rune discs surrounding his hands.

"Well my next trick is truly filthy!" Typhoid smirked, unsheathing her sword just as Strange tried to hit her with the enchanted discs, she easily dodged it before kicking him in the crotch and slashing his leg with her sword before ending the combo with a fire blast.

Strange crashed to the ground, he had underestimated Typhoid and was left scrambling for a strategy while writhing around trying to extinguish the flames "Hold still!" Moon Girl ordered, running over to the on-fire Avenger and unclipping a small aerosol canister off her belt and spraying a foam at Strange's chest, extinguishing the flames.

"T-Thank you." Strange said, hissing in pain from his fresh burns and bleeding leg, he could already tell from the pain that the nerves were damaged.

"Hey kid," Typhoid caught Moon's Girl attention, the mutant mercenary held out her flaming palm and aimed at the downed sorcerer "if you don't want Harry Houdini to be barbeque, come with me."

"I..." Moon Girl murmured, looking over at Devil Dinosaur who was still struggling against Doom bots despite chomping on one with its massive jaws.

"Don't, you have to run!" Strange stressed, applying pressure to his heavily bleeding leg, he looked over at the ablaze deli where Snowguard was still rescuing people.

Moon Girl wasn't the type to back down from bullies and right now she was looking up at the really nasty one, she wasn't to abandon to someone injured or her best buddy Devil Dinosaur, she was scared but she wasn't about to run away "I'm not going anywhere." Moon Girl blustered, holding her head high.

"You asked for it." Typhoid shrugged before slinging the fireball at Strange but before it hit him a shout seemingly stopped the flame in it's tracks.

" _PRAESIDIUM!"_ Mage bellowed, darting in front of Strange and making the golden tinged barrier appear causing fireball to bounce off the shield.

"Mage..." Strange spoke, marvelling at the wolf's bravery as Typhoid roared in anger and sent of barrage of fireballs at the barrier.

Mage didn't respond to Strange, he turned to Moon Girl and said in a friendly manner "You must be Moon Girl, name's Mage, nice to meet ya'."

"You're a talking wolf!" Moon Girl cheered, her eyes lighting up at the sight of Kodi.

"Those are some sweet roller skates, are they powerful enough for you to pull Doctor Strange to safety?" Mage asked with a confident smile, getting a flashbang card ready in one paw and tazer card in the other.

"Of course, I built them myself." Moon Girl replied, feeling encouraged.

"Wait, Mage what are you planning?" Strange asked, his voice trembling with pain.

"I'm going to lower the shield and Moon Girl is going to drag you to safety like the awesome hero she is." Mage informed, reading the HUD screen in his domino mask and seeing the shield's integrity was already down to 42% from Typhoid's constant fireball attacks.

"But you-" Strange tried to speak.

"Moon Girl, ready?" Mage asked, ignoring Strange.

"Ready!" Moon Girl shouted with bravado, grabbing hold of Doctor Strange from under his arms.

"3,2,1...NOW!" Mage shouted, he breathed in and in the instant the dropped the energy barrier but just as it disintegrated the wolf tossed the flashbang card against the shield, blinding all three heroes and the villainess. Moon Girl activated her rocket skates and zoomed across the street with Strange in her grip despite being the blinding light, Mage instinctively ducked and threw his tazer card at Typhoid's belly, he only knew it hit from the pained scream emanating from the assassin's mouth. As the flashbang faded a new scene presented itself; Snowguard had got all the citizens out of the burning deli, Moon Girl had gotten out a first aid kit and was tending to Doctor Strange's leg wound, Devil Dinosaur was stomping on the wrecked body of a Doom bot while chewing through the body of another and Mage had rolled back and witnessed a Doom bot scooping up the unconscious Typhoid and flying off in retreat.

"Did we w-win?" Snowguard coughed, helping an old man onto a bench.

"It's not a win until we get Moon Girl and her family to the Avengers compound." Mage wheezed, the smoke and stress finally hitting the wolf as the sound of police sirens approached to which Devil Dinosaur roared in victory "And Devil Dinosaur, of course."

"This might hurt, Doctor." Moon Girl warned before applying a surgical sealant gel onto Strange's leg.

Strange hissed as the gel was poured onto his bleeding leg, but he steadied his eyes on Mage and stated "I was wrong."

"What about?" Mage breathed, looking over at Devil Dinosaur with awe.

"You are a hero." Strange declared, looking up at the wolf.

000

Luna Wilde stepped into the SHIELD safehouse not long after five in the evening, the dust left of the car bomb at Parker Industries still coating her fur. She gave a tired sigh as she closed the door to the apartment and peeled off her domino mask, it had been a hell of a day; there was a bombing at Parker Industries, Andi had attacked the X Mansion and got away with Dr. Hank McCoy and Otto Octavius had been beheaded in his own cell. All of this had taken a beating on the vixen, she was used to having her beloved wife by her side to strengthen her and to be a shoulder to lean on but now Alice was out of action Luna quickly realised how much she needed her bunny.

"Good evening, Dr. Wilde." Arthur spoke from across the room, Luna looked over to see Arthur sat at a coffee table, pouring over papers and files.

"It's Luna, Arthur." Luna reminded before motioning to all the files and asking "What's all this?"

"I got Viv and your Bella AI to print out all the data on the missing mammals, there has to be a thread that connects them all, a reason they were kidnapped." Arthur said, sounding determined and reading the file concerning 'Esso Reese'.

"Once a cop, always a cop, eh?" Luna smiled, glad to the ZPD officer was still focused "Where are the others?"

"You're the first one back, Viv is still helping your sister with the night howler thing and Alice is in your room reading." Arthur answered, not taking his eyes off the lynx's file.

"Well, call us when the others get back." Luna replied lazily, walking over to her and Alice's assigned bedroom.

"Will do." Arthur mocked saluted, grabbing a cookie from a nearby plate and munching on it as he continued to read.

Luna opened the bedroom door to see Alice sat atop the human sized bed reading from her tablet while chilling in her PJs, Alice looked over at her exhausted looking spouse and crooned " _Bonne soiree mon amour."_

Luna's heart still melted at her wife's enticing french accent and the beauty she was radiating especially with her newly formed baby bump "Hey you." Luna replied, sounding like a love sick teen.

"I hear things got explosive at Parker Industries." Alice smiled as Luna began to undress.

"Well spoiler alert; Peter Parker was the first Spiderman, he and our Spiderman were able to sense the bomb, that's the only way he survived." Luna groaned, slipping out of her leather pants.

"Sounds like a rough day." Alice sympathised despite hearing the revelation "Go take a shower and when you come out I'll have a treat for you."

Luna read her wife's smile and grinned "I'll be quick."

About ten minutes later Luna stepped out of the en suite bathroom in her pyjamas not to find Alice in an alluring pose of the bed but stood up outside the bathroom with a notepad in her paws "Why are you not on the bed?" Luna gawped.

"This is your treat." Alice smiled sweetly, pointing at the notepad.

"I thought sex was the treat." Luna spoke, her ears flattening against her skull.

"And they say rabbits are the overly horny species." Alice chuckled before inviting "Just take a look."

Luna took the pad off Alice and saw a list of names written in red ink, all of the names were familiar causing Luna to ask "Are these finalised baby names? The ones you really want."

"Yeah...I figured we could go over them and pick some for the litter." Alice explained, oddly shy.

Luna pulled Alice into a hug and kiss her atop of her head "This is a treat, thank you Alice." she then crouched down and spoke directly to Alice's baby bump "Ok kids, let's decide your names."

"Are you asking the babies' opinion?" Alice chuckled.

"Well seeing as it their names, I think they should have a choice." Luna reminded, having said the same thing earlier in the week. Luna read the first name and was hardly surprised by It, she said to the bump "Ok so your Mom really wants one of you to be called Sayame, any of you like that?" she asked not expecting an answer as she pressed her ear to Alice's tummy but was surprised when she felt a small kick vibrate against her ear.

"Was that?" Alice gasped, stunned that she felt her first kick.

There were tears in Luna's amber eyes as she replied "I think little Sayame likes her name."

"Sayame Wilde..." Alice whispered, stroking her bump "Read the rest of the names, see what they think."

"Ok, here we go," Luna sniffed "Nicholas? No. Mason? No kick either. How about Victoria?" There was a definite kick felt "Victoria!" the couple ran through the list of names until the names were finally decided; Sayame, Victoria, John, Stuart and Heather. They knew that these names could change but both Luna and Alice knew that they wouldn't let their children suffer the way they did.

000

Clara was always the first one of the prisoners to wake up in The Cauldron, back home she was a heavy sleeper who could slumber for hours and hours but she could only manage a few hours on the uncomfortable bottom bunk in the cell she shared with Esso. Clara was in the bathroom block alone, staring at the mirror and brushing her teeth, her mind already working out the final calculations to optimise the ship's energy siphon, as soon as she figured that out Doom would hopefully tell her his need for imprisoning the mammals and maybe Clara would be granted her window of opportunity to enact her escape plan. Clara was so lost in thought that she didn't notice the sound of flapping wings behind her "Professor Bloom." A voice whispered, Clara jumped with fright and looked around her to see a fretful Zoe perched on top of a security camera so she was out of the camera's sight "Turn back around, don't look at me." Zoe instructed, her voice sounding nervous.

"Sorry, I expected to see you in Kurt's holding room later." Clara replied, looking back at the mirror and went through the motions of washing her face as not to raise suspicion "Did you find out what Doom was planning?"

"No there's a deadlocked room that can only be opened with a manual key but I found something more worrying." Zoe answered, the large bat keeping her volume to a minimum.

"What?" Clara asked, resisting the urge to look up at Zoe.

"Body bags." Zoe revealed.

"Body bags?" Clara gasped, tensing up.

"About thirty empty bags for mammals of all sizes, they were in a storeroom." Zoe added.

"Crap." Clara muttered before stating "Ok, I'll update the others, they need to know about this. Hopefully today I can get more info out of Doom, maybe we can piece together the puzzle."

"Ok, just be careful." Zoe advised before flying towards the nearest air vent.

Clara made sure to finish washing her paws and face to appear normal before calmly making her way back to her cell, she pushed the door closed then stepped over to the bunk "Esso." Clara whispered.

Esso was squirming in her sleep, her face screwed up in discomfort and she was sleep talking in a very quiet voice.

"Esso, wake up." Clara willed, climbing the small ladder to the top bunk.

"...It's the..." Esso uttered in a sleepy haze.

Clara could see her bunkmate was having some sort of nightmare, she reached out and shook Esso's shoulder "Hey Esso."

Esso's eyes shot open, looking crazed and scared, in a flurry her paw reached under her pillow and whipped out an improvised shiv made from a toothbrush and put it to Clara's throat "We are..." Esso began to snarl but as soon as she saw who she had the shiv pointed at her expression turned to shock and sadness.

"What the fuck, Esso!?" Clara shouted, more angry than scared.

Esso dropped her shiv and scuttled back against the wall "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." She panted, tears forming in her eyes.

Clara let out a breath and calmed herself down before asking "What the hell were you dreaming about?"

Esso hated looking weak and right now she knew she looked more vulnerable than ever, she looked at her trembling paws and the horrid visions of her dreams flickered in her mind "It doesn't matter." Esso dismissed, hiding her shaking paws in her hoodie pockets and hating the fact that she had let someone see her like this, that someone saw a crack in her armour.

(AN/ So what did you folks think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on TBM; Esso gets defensive, Clara learns more about Doom's plan, the teams regroup and Rocket bags himself a prize. Please review and c ya soon...)


	24. Resurface

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Also a big thank you to Esso-is who rote part of this chapter. As always I'd love to thank everyone who liked, followed, faved, reblogged and reviewed. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 23- Resurface**

Esso was still tetchy as she sat down to breakfast with the prisoners that she was closest too, she was too guarded to call them friends outright even though that was what she considered them. The lynx sneakily put a couple of extra rashers of turkey bacon on Jason's plate, the young caracal boy smiling at the kind gesture. The offering of precious rations did not go unnoticed by Clara, who had been concerned about her cellmate's violent outburst with a shiv earlier that morning, the she-wolf wanted to respect Esso's privacy but after having a blade to her throat the need for courtesy was waning.

Esso's increase in abrasiveness had gone unnoticed to everyone else around the cafeteria table; Vanessa was too busy chatting away about how every other prisoner was fairing, in her role as mother hen of the prisoners she didn't just concern herself with her friends but those she disliked as well. Harper had finished his breakfast of sweet grass and fruits pretty quickly and was busying himself by using a limited amount of his powers to form flower bracelets for young Jason and Regina. The tall mare looked at the bracelet of violets entwined around her wrist and then back at the stag who had created them out of nothing, she felt touched by the vivid colours in such a dark and depressing place and reacted in kind by holding up her hoofs and spelling the words 'Thank You' with crystal blue water.

"Wow, that's sappy even for me." Vanessa chuckled at the smitten mammals who were still yet to become a couple.

"Vanessa..." Regina mumbled, looking down at her breakfast instead of the mammals around her.

"I'm just trying to brighten the place up." Harper fibbed badly.

"Yeah right, what do you think Esso?" Vanessa grinned.

Esso seemed to flinch for a moment, as if pulled from her thoughts but quickly recovered by slyly smiling at Jason "Kid, do you mind covering your ears for a second?"

"Ok." Jason shrugged with a full mouth of turkey bacon before placing his paws over his ears .

When Esso was sure the cougar boy wasn't listening, she smirked at Regina and Harper "You two need to fuck and get it over with."

Harper gasped at this, Vanessa gave a reserved chuckle and Regina hissed "Esso!"

Clara saw through Esso's attempt at masking her distress, it was a good bluff but Clara was too smart for it. The physicist hated to ruin the somewhat joyful moment but had to bring up what Zoe had told her in the bathroom block earlier "Ok so it goes without saying I need you to act normal with what I'm about to say." Clara said before downing her orange juice.

"Well that's ominous." Vanessa reacted in a deadpan manner.

"W-what's the matter?" Regina fidgeted.

"Zoe Nightfall came to see me this morning in the bathroom block, she found something in one of the storage rooms in the lower levels of The Cauldron; she found empty body bags." Clara revealed.

"Body bags." Harper reacted with a hushed gasp.

"They're planning to..." Esso began to speak but didn't want to frighten Jason so she reworded "So Doom's got something bad in mind?"

"I don't know, I fixed the energy siphon problem so he's promised to clue me in on the details of why we were kidnapped in the first place, maybe then I can figure what the body bags are for." Clara answered.

"No one with good intentions has body bags just laying around." Vanessa commented, not letting her fear get to her.

"But you have a escape plan worked out right? You need to tell us." Regina asked Clara anxiously.

"If I tell you the plan before it's fully ready there's a risk of it leaking back to Doom, he has cameras everywhere plus if one of you accidently blabs to another prisoner it could compromise everyone's safety." Clara reasoned "I just need a couple of more days to work out the kinks."

"But-" Harper began to complain but was cut off by Vanessa.

"Clara makes sense, until the plan is complete it's safer that we don't know." Vanessa back up Clara, effectively silencing Harper and Regina.

The discussion was brought to an abrupt halt by the mechanical noises of the hatch opening, it was time for Clara to head to Kurt's room and the Doombots had come to escort her there. Clara stood up from the table and grumbled "Time to talk to old buckethead."

Esso got up from her seat and said sincerely "Good luck."

Clara was worried about leaving her friend alone in such a fragile state, she stepped forward and surprised the shorter mammal with a hug, she felt Esso stiffen before whispering "I don't know what's going on and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to but just remember I'm your friend Esso."

Esso loosened up and hugged the she-wolf back and uttered "I'm your friend, too." before stepping back and blustering "Yeesh all you wolves are so huggy."

Clara shook her head and smiled at the lynx before one of the Doombots landed beside her, took hold of her and flew up through the open hatch. The Doombot released Clara once they were on solid ground, the professor then began to walk through the narrow corridor towards Kurt's room but when she turned the corner she found the towering figure of Doctor Doom blocking the way, she jumped with fright before hissing "Damn it, you trying to give me a heart attack?"

Doom ignored Clara's fright and simply instructed "Come with Doom, it's time you learn why you're here." before walking off.

Clara followed Doom and immediately asked "Where are you taking me?"

"To the bridge, to show you footage of how chaotic and dangerous Doom's universe truly is and why you and your fellow prisoners will make it safer." Doom answered, his heavy boots clanking as he walked through the ship.

"How? Is it do with our powers?" Clara asked further

"It has everything to do with your powers." Doom replied, not even looking at Clara as they walked "You see the world Doom comes from is overflowing with powered individuals be they mutants, inhumans or magic users and when a world holds that much power crisis after crisis emerges."

"What kind of crisis?" Clara queried.

"Alien invasion, wars between super powered fools, science experiments gone wrong, threats from other dimensions, Gods using earth as a battleground, rouge AI trying to destroy organic life...the threats Latvaria and the rest of earth has faced have brought humanity to the brink of extinction too many times, Doom needs to protect the Latvarian people and the rest of earth that's why your powers are needed." Doom explained with conviction, he truly believed in his words.

"You want to build an army?" Clara guessed.

"Correct Professor, you are sharp as always." Doom confirmed.

"But why us?" Clara dug deeper

"Doom released a chemical into the purple cloud when Nightcrawler's powers breached into your dimension, it was engineered to react like Terrigen mist, the tool the inhumans use to activate their dormant powers but Doom redesigned it to reveal and activate the dormant X genes that every being across the multiverse possesses." Doom replied, stepping into an elevator with Clara going in after him.

"But why do you pick us? There were hundreds of mammals affected by the purple cloud so why did you pick only seventeen of us?" Clara probed.

"For two reasons. One; the prisoners were selected for being the most useful for the Latverian army. The donkey's ability to control oxygen, the caracal child who can turn his entire form into bulletproof metal and your power to be a walking electrical generator would serve Latveria immeasurably. And as for the second reason; across the entire multiverse you are all unique." Doom answered, pressing the control panel to make the elevator go up.

"Wait what do you mean unique?" Clara questioned.

"Doom is sure you must realise that there are copies of everyone across the multiverse, that a different version of Doom exists across multiple dimension? Well you and your fellow prisoners have no copies, you all only exist in Zootopia, nowhere else and in no other realities." Doom answered.

"That's impossible." Clara breathed "Everyone has different versions of themselves."

"Your mammal earth has the highest number of unique souls, that's why Doom picked your earth and your most populated city; Zootopia." Doom explained further.

Clara was still trying process that her and the others had no multiverse doubles but proceeded with her questions "But why do you need unique souls?"

"It's one of the cosmic mysteries of the multiverse; powered individuals share their strength and energy with their doppelgangers across dimensions, when one dies the powers depletes and weakens for all copies. Unique souls' powers never weaken, your powers are stronger than any others." Doom answered, the elevator doors opened and he stepped out onto what looked like the control deck, there was someone sat in the pilot's seat but he was facing the clear window to the purple abyss outside so Clara's couldn't see him face.

"So I'm assuming you want to extract our powers and put them into your soldiers, won't that weaken the powers?" Clara tried to point out the flaw in his plan.

"No, the power division problem only arises when the souls are the same, I could put your power into a hundred of my best soldiers and it wouldn't weaken." Doom answered "You and the others' powers are at their best when you are in perfect health, hence why Doom made sure everyone has their medications from Zootopia."

"So that's why you kept giving my HRT drugs." Clara mulled but then she remembered the body bags so she asked "So the extraction, I assume it's like a surgical procedure?"

"Doom won't lie, it's going to be painful but computer simulations predict 92% survival rate." Doom answered, walking over to a bank of computer monitors which were displaying the vital signs of each prisoner.

"92%? What about the other 8%? You're willing to let innocent mammals die for your sick dream of a super army!?" Clara snapped.

"Their sacrifice will protect countless lives, Doom is the only hope for earth!" Doom yelled, looking down at the wolf.

"You're a monster!" Clara snarled.

"No Doom is a saviour." The tyrant boomed, before pressing a few buttons on a nearby keyboard causing the monitors to show footage of carnage from his earth, there was wildfires caused by a mutant, hostile spaceships orbiting earth, villains and heroes clashing on the streets "All this chaos has brought earth to its knees, Doom is sick of seeing so many Latvarians die, Doom will protect his people and the rest of earth and if mammals have to die in order to achieve then so be it!"

"You sick son of a bitch!" Clara barked.

Doom hand shot out and gripped Clara's throat "If you weren't needed for the plan Doom would snap your neck like a twig."

Clara gave a defiant look and spat in Doom's face, the armoured villain looked like he was about to throw Clara across the room but the sound of loud snoring redirected his rage. He looked to the pilot's chair before dropping Clara and marching over "Tazerface!" he bellowed.

A heavily scarred humanoid with greasy hair stumbled out of his chair "S-sir..." he stammered.

"You dare to fall asleep at your post?" Doom's voice boiled.

Clara put her paw to her now sore neck and coughed a little, she was about to hurl another insult at him when something caught her eye on screen. It looked like a camera feed from a Doombot, it was city street with humans running away from a chaotic scene, there was bearded man with a red cloak on the ground being tended to by a young girl in a bizarre costume but protecting them was a mammal. "Kodi..." Clara whispered. Kodi was in his Mage guise using his 'Magic' shield to block fireballs being thrown by a red haired woman in very revealing outfit, Clara ignored the crazy scene and focused on Kodi. He was on Doom's Earth. He was looking for her. Clara felt her cheeks grow moist and touched them to realise she was crying; she had had been so focused on getting her and the other mammals to safety that she deliberately didn't dwell on her own sadness at being Doom's prisoner. She wanted to go back to her own dimension, she wanted to go back to New York to visit her family for Hannukah and even though her relationship with Kodi had only just begun she wanted to be in his arms. All her pent up sadness and longing was finally released when she saw Kodi "Still being a hero, even in another dimension." Clara cried softly, reaching out and touching the screen but her fingertips came into contact with the monitor she felt a jolt of power course through her, her paw began to glow with a violet aura and then became somewhat transparent "What?" She uttered.

"If I find you asleep one more time I'll tear out your spine!" Doom roared, kicking the downed Tazerface.

The sudden outburst pulled Clara back into the moment, her paw was no longer transparent or glowing. There was more to her powers than being a walking battery and she was going to use them to stop Doom, she looked over at the raging villain before wiping away her tears, if Kodi was doing all he could to rescue her and the others then she was going to help.

000

Kodi was sat in his assigned bedroom of the SHIELD safehouse looking at a photo of him and Clara on their paintball date on his phone, whenever he was alone his mind always drifted to her. He wanted to do more in the rescue effort but every time he felt the team was making progress there was another road block, he hadn't been able to capture Typhoid Mary before the Doombots extracted her so yet another lead and slipped through his grasp.

Doctor Strange had commented that the psychopathic mutant would never have talked anyway but it still vexed the wolf but Moon Girl and her family was safe and that made him feel a little better. Also Strange had apologised for being rude and dismissive of him and before making his way to the Avenger Compound made sure to pass on his phone number to the hero saying that if he wanted to learn a couple of real magic spells he should give him a call. Any other time Kodi would've jumped at the chance but after hearing what happened at the X Mansion he wanted to rush back to safehouse to make sure Robyn was ok.

Mostly of The Champions and Team Ceartais had arrived back at the Safehouse, only Ms Marvel, Bullet and Rocket Racoon were still out on their missions. While everyone fussed around the victorious Robyn in her now extremely tattered uniform Brawn made his way to the bathroom. He went to open the door but the occupant opened it having finished up. It was Riri who looked up at Brawn with relief in her big brown eyes "Hey Ri-" Brawn began but was cut off by a sudden hug from the young engineer "Um, you alright there?" He asked, sounding awkward.

"I was so worried about you, when I heard about what happened at the X mansion I thought something horrible had happened to you." Riri unloaded, hugging into Brawn's toned chest.

"Hey, I'm ok. You should be worried about Robyn, that girl had adamantium claws pierce her brain." Brawn eased.

Riri released Brawn from the hug and spoke "But I was still more worried about you Amadeus."

"Riri..." Brawn reacted, his cheeks blushing a darker green.

There was a lull of silence between the teen heroes for a moment, Riri took hold of Brawn's massive hand and said "Listen, we need to talk. We both know there's something between us, that we're more than friends but I'm not sure what you want us to be."

Brawn absorbed the words and the soft touch of Riri's hand, he then admitted "You're right we do need to talk but when we're alone, how about tomorrow? At the portable base?"

"Ok, tomorrow." Riri agreed, give Brawn's hand a little squeeze before releasing it, she walked back to the living room while Brawn continued into the bathroom both of them anxious about what awaited them tomorrow.

Riri walked into the living room of the spacious apartment to find everyone gathered around Robyn "Seriously Robbie, how many times are you going to die?" Luna fussed, hugging onto her little sister.

"I'm fine, Lu. I always come back." Robyn groaned, used to her sister's protective nature.

"Yeah but your uniform doesn't regenerate, if it gets any more damage you'll be giving everyone a free peep show." Olivia commented, chewing on some gummy candy while sat on Spiderman's shoulder.

"You need to learn to sew, I've had to patch up my uniform way too many times." Spiderman suggested.

"Maybe Coulson could put you in touch with someone to repair it." Kion added, who was busying himself making a nacho platter in the kitchen with Snowguard's help while Alice munched on some carrot sticks while sitting on the counter.

"Or you could let me build you a high tech super suit that is more damage resistant." Riri offered.

"You'd do that? Thanks Riri." Robyn smiled, freeing herself from Luna's hug

"No worries, I'll need a few days to fix it up but we'll have you looking awesome in no time." Riri replied.

The sound of front door unlocking caught everyone's attention and it opened up to reveal Ms Marvel and Bullet, both of whom looked unscathed by their mission. Bullet made a b line straight for Robyn and embraced her wife before kissing her deeply causing Kodi to chuckle "Save it for the bedroom girls."

Bullet ceased the kiss and ignored Kodi's comment, saying "You know how to make me worry princess."

"I'm sorry, Blind Badass." Robyn apologised before kissing her again "Things got out of hand."

"Yeah if by out of hand means getting your arm chopped off and having your brain stabbed." Luna added.

"I trust your mission was successful?" Viv asked Ms. Marvel.

"Yeah we had to evacuate a friend of mine, Bruno Carrelli." Ms Marvel answered, sounding worried "He wasn't too happy about being shipped off to the Avengers Compound with Captain Marvel."

"I've heard of Bruno Carrelli, he's one hell of an inventor." Amadeus said, walking back into the living room from the bathroom.

"He's the one who helped make my suit, he made so it morphs along with my powers." Ms Marvel said before adding "He's my best friend, I can't believe Doom wants him dead."

"Wait does Bruno guy know who you are? Like the IRL you?" Snowguard queried.

"Well, yeah. We grew up together." Ms Marvel shrugged.

"Dude, we've known you for years and we still don't know your real name." Spiderman whined.

"Wait they don't know your real name?" Olivia asked Ms Marvel.

"I take my secret identity very seriously, it protects my family and friends." Ms Marvel justified.

"Yeah but we're your team mates, you know all our names." Riri complained.

"Ignore them Ms. Marvel." A voice said out of nowhere. Ms Marvel turned to see Arthur Knight sat at the dining table reading various files, focusing on his investigation "If you think it protects your family then It's worth it."

"Thanks Arthur." Ms Marvel smiled before asking "What're you working on?"

"Trying to figure out why the missing mammals were selected, trying to find a common factor." Arthur answered quickly, he still wasn't used to talking to humans.

"Arthur thinks if we can find that answer it may give us clue to why Doom took them in the first place." Luna added.

Ms Marvel hadn't closed the front door yet so no one noticed Rocket stroll in until he announced "Hey dumbasses, heard none of you bagged a baddie."

"And good evening to you too, Rocket." Kion replied, setting down the nacho platter down on the coffee table for everyone.

"So let me get this straight; most of you guys have super powers and wasn't able to catch a single bad guy?" Rocket asked in a smarmy fashion, going over and taking some nachos and stuffing them in his mouth.

"Well, no. Andi had hostages at the X mansion." Brawn responded, sounding defensive "And everyone else had problems too; Doombots, car bombs, severed heads. It's been a crazy day."

"Yeah and it's not like you were successful either." Spiderman blustered.

"Funny you should say that." Rocket smirked before shouting "She-Hulk show em' what we bagged."

She-Hulk then walked through the open door with a satisfied smile on her face and carrying a hogtied Crossbones on her shoulder, she threw the masked merc onto the floor and grinned "Hulk and Raccoon catch bone man."

"Oh my gosh." Ms Marvel gasped "Guys that's amazing."

"You don't realise how much you've messed up!" Crossbones seethed, struggling against his binds.

"Ah can it ya' chump." Rocket reacted, throwing a cheesy nacho at Crossbones' face.

"How'd you catch him?" Viv enquired.

"Smart Raccoon laid trap." She-Hulk answered.

"I spread a tasty rumour that Bruce Banner had been spotted in Brooklyn, helping out a free clinic. This dipshit showed up within an hour, two shock blasts from my rifle and this pussy drops like a sack of crap." Rocket bragged.

"You shot me in the back, you ain't that honourable." Crossbones spat.

"Says the man who tried to assassinate Princess Shuri." Alice commented.

"I ain't in it for the honour bone man, once I get some intel out of you I'm handing you over to SHIELD so I can collect that tasty bounty." Rocket replied.

"Remember my half goes to free clinic." She-Hulk reminded the greedy bounty hunter.

"Fine, fine." Rocket waved off begrudgingly.

Bullet walked over to where Crossbones was laid and crouched down to unclip his mask, revealing his furious face "What? Did you want to look at my face?" he seethed.

"I'm blind, I can't see your face. The reason I took off your mask is because I owe you something." Bullet replied in a chilling voice.

"Owe me?" Crossbones reacted.

Bullet stood up before kicking Crossbones hard in the face "That's for tranqing me!" She then sent another kick to the merc's face "That's for shooting my wife!" she then put all her strength into her last kick, breaking Crossbones' nose and causing to spew blood "And that's for melting her face with acid!"

Kodi rushed over and pulled Bullet away "Whoa, take it easy Stripes!" he yelled.

"You damn mongrel!" Crossbones snarled, his nose pouring blood.

Kodi let go of Bullet before Ms Marvel chastised "That's not how we treat prisoners."

"No that's how I treat the scumbag who hurt my princess." Bullet defied.

Even though it was brutish and wrong, Robyn's heart melted and she cooed "I love you."

"I like the way you think, Bullet." Rocket smiled offering his fist for a bump "If someone did that to my girl I'd beat their ass too."

Bullet fist bumped Rocket before adding "Must be a gunslinger state of mind."

"Ok, ok. Enough of the beating we need to actually interrogate this guy." Riri spoke, hoping to bring civility back to conversation.

"Our potion and poison master can take care of that, Alice would you kindly?" Olivia asked with a sly smile.

" _Avec plaisir."_ Alice responded, finishing off a carrot stick and jumping down from the kitchen counter.

"You think this fat bunny can make me talk?" Crossbones spat.

Luna was about to snap at the merc but a sly wink from her pregnant wife made her stop, Alice stepped over to Crossbones and said in an oddly soft voice "This fat bunny used to go by another name; Ronin."

Crossbones' face blanched, his eyes went wide with fear "You're Alice Wilde?" he asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

" _Oui,_ and you should know that have all the same skills that your version of Alice has. You will talk, I guarantee it." Alice assured with a devilish smile.

000

To say that Esso had a rough morning would be an understatement. She hated to admit but the hellhole she was stuck in for the past 77 days was getting to her. Not only did she have to listen to music for longer and longer to control her anxiety, but her terror was catching up with her in the subconscious as well. She was used to get the odd nightmare here and there but the lynx was getting one pretty much every night now and it was not doing her mental state any favours.

It all culminated earlier this morning when she almost stabbed Clara in the throat, and despite the former's reassurance, Esso was still messed up about what she had done. She had just entered the communal bathroom when she heard a voice call to her "So, for how long do you plan to keep this shtick up, Davis?"

"What?!" Esso turn around startled only to come face to face with a polar bear.

"C'mon I know you're cracking, Davis. What's up, Morrigan withdrawal getting to you, oooh, or is it th-" the bear teased.

"Shut up, Cal!" Esso shouted "You don't know what you're talking about!"

"Yes I do, Felicia! I know exactly who you are!" he retaliated, forcefully backing her into a wall.

"Like hell you do. My name is Sabrina Reese." Esso barked back.

"Yeah, Sabrina "Esso" Reese, from Canada who moved to Zootopia four years back blah, blah, blah." Cal mocked "We both know you never left America-"

"Shut up!" Esso said, attempting to keep calm.

"-You're a tourist from Las Vegas, who stayed in Zootopia because-"

"Shut up!" Esso repeated, her voice cracking.

"-because she became part of the Drowned."

"I SAID SHUT UP!" Esso roared, getting a hold of her shiv and plunging it deep into Cal's abdomen.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up shutupshutupshutupshutupshutup!" Esso kept screaming as she stabbed the already dead polar bear over and over again.

She didn't even hear the alarm ringing. She didn't even see Regina getting out of one of the stalls and witnessing the brutal event. She didn't even notice the rest of the prisoners gathered in the bathroom. She didn't even register Clara shaking her and asking her what happened before the bots carried her away.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Esso was a Drowned cultist!? How did the polar bear know? Will Crossbones break? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror Alice's interrogation of Crossbones begins, Clara tries to get through to a traumatised Esso and Kodi takes a chance. Please Review and c ya soon...)


	25. The Mask Slips

(AN/ Hi folks I'm back after my unexpected week break due to a family emergency, thank you for your patience and all your messages of support. Ok so here's a disclaimer I decided to make the Tumblr version of this chapter M rated as a middle finger to Tumblr's stupid dec 17 policy, so if you wanna read go to my tumblr Crewefox. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 24- The mask slips.**

It felt like a nightmare. That's the only way Esso could describe her mental state at the moment, she was sat on the floor of one of the isolation cells with her back against the door looking at the dried blood on her paw and replaying the horrendous moment over and over again in her head. She could still feel the vibrations in her hand when she plunged the shiv into Cal, the polar bear who knew her secret, she had never done something so violent since...Esso shook her head and refused to think about her past, so all she was left with was the guilt, the fear and her despair.

"Esso." A soft voice spoke, despite its gentleness Esso felt like she had a bucket of ice water thrown over her.

"Hey Clara." Esso croaked, unable to muster the will to turn around and face her friend "So Doom let you come see me before I'm executed, huh?"

"Doom wants us all alive, Esso. You're not going to die." Clara assured, the physicist was crouched down and touching the extremely thick glass where Esso was leaning.

"If Doom doesn't kill me, everyone else will...don't blame them really." Esso replied, trying to sound blasé.

"Actually, everyone is kind of' confused about what happened." Clara replied, sounding troubled.

"I stabbed Cal a bunch of times, that's what happened." Esso reacted, trying to switch back into snarky mode but her voice betrayed her, she was broken.

"We know that...but why?" Clara queried "Some mammals are saying you must have been defending yourself, that they saw him follow you into the bathroom, did he try and-"

"It wasn't anything like that, he wasn't trying to rape me." Esso said flatly.

"...Ok." Clara said before bringing up another possibility "Regina was in one of the bathroom stalls when it happened, she said Cal said something to you."

Esso let out the smallest of cries before steeling herself and hissing "Then she's already blabbed and everyone knows what I am!"

"Regina only told me, even Harper doesn't know, I swear." Clara promised "But I won't believe it until you tell me yourself."

Esso focused on the dried blood on her paw for a moment before closing her eyes and confessing "I was a Drowned cultist."

Clara didn't gasp, she didn't grow angry either, instead her eyes filled with sympathy but knew Esso too well to start off soothing her, the lynx's defences were still up so she asked, "How did Cal know?"

"Because he was one too, he's the bastard who put my head into a god damn bucket to see if I was 'Worthy'." Esso replied, sounding bitter.

"They used drugs to warp your mind, Esso. If you were released by authorities you must've been rehabilitated." Clara tried to reason.

"I was already a Morrigan junkie when they found me, they cold turkey'd one drug and then pumped me full of others so I was one of Fuli's little worker bees." Esso revealed, sad that this was the circumstances that she had to share this secret.

"Cal was blackmailing you, wasn't he?" Clara guessed.

"Ten points to the professor," Esso sighed sadly "where do you think most of my pudding cups and hoarded extra drugs went? That asshole was taunting me about being a ex junkie, that prick was munching xanax like candy."

"But why didn't you expose him?" Clara asked.

"Oh please, who do you think the others would believe; the clean-cut polar bear from a nice background or a bitchy lynx who isn't the best at interacting with other mammals and takes bets on their misery?" Esso asked rhetorically.

"...Fair enough." Clara hated to agree.

"There's a reason I don't let mammals get close to me, I feel like I'm in control but there's always that 'What if', you know? What if I'm not rehabilitated? What if I freak out and hurt someone? I try so much but it's been getting harder and harder to keep calm and then last night the mask slipped, just for a second but that was enough to kill someone." Esso ranted, her anger and hatred aimed at herself "Doom's not going to let me back with the other prisoners, is he?"

"Probably not." Clara answered truthfully with a sad expression on her muzzle.

"Well that sucks..." Esso groaned, trying to deny the tears in her eyes "Share my stash among our little group will ya'? Make sure all the candy goes to Jason."

Clara could hear sadness cracking through the feline's voice, she wished she could open the door and give her friend a hug but all she could give was hope "I'm going to tell them what you've told me and then tell them that you're still my friend and we're going to need you for the escape plan."

"W-what?" Esso reacted, not expecting these words. The lynx finally turned to face Clara and hastily wiped the tears away from her eyes "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I've figured out how to get everyone out of here, only a couple of us can escape at first but once I'm out it'll be a hell of a lot easier for everyone else to take over the ship." Clara rallied.

"Don't tell me anymore! Doom might interogate me!" Esso whispered anxiously.

"Don't worry all I need you to do in the plan is cause a huge distraction, that means using your powers." Clara smiled "Can you do that?"

Esso hesitated for a moment, she hadn't used her powers since she was brought to The Cauldron, none of the other prisoners didn't even know what they were but there was a reason for that; they were far deadlier than a shiv. But if she could help the others, it was worth the risk. She looked at Clara, then thought of Jason, Harper, Regina and Vanessa "I'm in, just give the word and I'll turn this place to hell."

000

Ms Marvel had persuaded Agent Coulson not to tell Director Hill about Crossbones' capture, if the head of SHIELD found out that one of the world's most wanted men was in the SHIELD apartment building she would send a team to escort him to the RAFT prison. Coulson could only promise the teams twenty-four hours after that he would have to tell Hill, Alice was confident she would get him to crack well within the time limit.

It was just after 10 am in the morning and in the basement of the SHIELD owned apartment complex Rocket, Spiderman and Bullet were sat on an old sofa with uncomfortable looks on their faces as they listened to the terrified cries and screams come from the boiler room; Alice had been 'Working' on Crossbones since 6am and by the sounds of it her methods of interrogation were working.

"A-are you sure she's not torturing him?" Spiderman asked Bullet anxiously.

"Quite sure. Alice has just given him some hallucinogens and few potions to make him more talkative. Right about now Crossbones is probably seeing the faces of the people he's killed through the years." Bullet explained, although she was accustomed to Alice's techniques she never got used to the screaming.

"How do you know that?" Rocket asked, the bounty hunter was polishing his gun.

"Because Alice told me she tested all her poisons and potions on herself." Bullet answered, "She wanted to make sure criminals saw their nightmares."

"That's bad ass." Rocket grinned.

"It's hard to think Alice was once a villain, she's such a sweet rabbit." Spiderman commented, having to talk loudly over Crossbones' wailing in the boiler room.

"Well the first time the team ran into her she stabbed Robyn in the eye with a shuriken, that started one hell of feud between the two. They were arch enemies." Bullet informed.

"And now they're sister in laws...that's crazy." Spiderman mumbled.

"That's love." Bullet smiled "Alice fell in love with Luna and it changed her."

At that moment Alice stepped out of boiler room and kindly asked "Spiderman would you be a darling and keep an eye on our guest? The little ones need a snack." The bunny doe resting a paw on her baby bump.

"Sure." Spiderman answered in an unsure voice, peeking into the boiler and seeing the bound Crossbones blubbering like a baby "Is he ok?"

"Physically he's fine but mentally, well the results speak for themselves." Alice answered, sounding chipper despite the context.

"So, did he snitch on Doom and his cronies?" Rocket asked impatiently.

"Not yet, but he did admit wetting the bed until he was fourteen." Alice shrugged "Give me a few more hours and he'll answer anything."

Alice walked off towards the stairs and Spiderman went into the boiler room to guard Crossbones, as soon as the webslinger closed the door Rocket groused "This whole job has been one road block after another, every time I think I'm close to Tazerface more bullshit spews up to ruin my hunt."

"I've got to ask why are you so intent on catching this Tazerface guy? Surely the bounty on Crossbones is more than enough." Bullet probed.

"It ain't that simple Bullet, I don't want some other bounty hunter to snare Tazerface, it has to be me." Rocket answered, resting his gun against the sofa.

"Ah, so it's personal." Bullet connected the dots.

Rocket looked at Bullet before saying "I guess there's no harm in telling ya', you and I have similar ideals when it comes to dealing with the bastards who hurt the ones we love."

Bullet could hear the sadness in Rocket's gruff voice, it was the first time she had heard the tough mammal sound so vulnerable "What happened?" She asked in a still voice.

"Back before I met up with Groot and joined The Guardians I used to have a partner in crime, but she was more than a partner...I loved her." Rocket answered, his eyes smiling as he envisioned his dead lover "Her name was Lylla, she was experimented on just like me, engineered to be little killing machines. Anyway, we escaped that place and started doing bounty hunting across the galaxy, man she was beautiful."

"Was she a raccoon too?" Bullet queried.

"Nah, hell I didn't even know I was a raccoon until I came to earth. I looked it up, she was what you guys call an otter." Rocket answered "A few years passed and we made quite a bit of money, we decided to settle down on Xandar and live a quiet life. We were flying to the planet when it happened, when Tazerface's pirates attacked our ship."

"Rocket, I'm so sorry." Bullet whispered.

Bullet could smell the salt from the small tears in Rocket's watery eyes "She died in my arms, Bullet...That's why I gotta' be the one who takes Tazerface in, I want to see that fat bastard beg the Nova corps for mercy before they hang him."

Bullet put a supportive paw on Rocket's shoulder and willed "You'll get him Rocket."

Bullet didn't say thank you even though he was thankful, he had spent the last eight years chasing Tazerface and now all he needed to do was wait a little longer, Crossbones would crack and he would be one step closer to finding his bounty.

000

The Champions came from different parts of North America, from the far north of Canada to the scorching south of Texas. The team used to use Brawn's lab/house as a base for their first year as an active team but the commute took its toll on some team members so Riri, Wasp and Brawn created something that made everyone's life easier; the mobile bunker. It was a converted SHIELD airborne troop carrier that was redesigned to house the Champions complete with a lab, command centre, showers and kitchen. The huge aircraft had SHIELD permits to park anywhere on US soil and right now it was parked in the middle of central park with loads of passers by taking photos of the superhero base/transport. Riri was the only one in the mobile bunker at the moment, she had begun working on a replacement for Scarlet's heavily damaged uniform in the lab, which was a lot harder than she first imagined seeing as she wasn't working on a human outfit but one for a rabbit/fox hybrid. The engineer had just started her machines weaving the new suit when she heard a set of familiar heavy footsteps walking towards the lab, it was Brawn. Riri took a deep breath and psyched herself up for the conversation, it was time to be honest and sometimes the truth hurt. She turned around just as Brawn was walking in, the green skinned hero was in his mission gear despite being off duty and was holding two papers cups of coffee. "Hey." He greeted, sounding oddly timid "Figured you might need a coffee, you've probably been working all morning without a break."

"You know me so well, thanks." Riri replied, taking the coffee from Brawn and taking a sip.

Brawn set his half full cup of coffee on a workbench and uneasily opened with "So about this talk..."

"You aren't chickening out on me, are you Cho?" Riri teased.

"Nothing like that." Brawn waved off "I just want to know, why now?"

"Because we've left this whole thing far too long...and Kion kind of' twisted my arm." Riri answered.

Brawn let out a small laugh and added "Yeah, Alice talked me into it too."

"Sounds like they ship us, just like everyone else." Riri shrugged.

"Wait the rest of The Champions want us to be together?" Brawn asked, sounding surprised.

"Really?" Riri reacted, hardly believing someone so smart could be so dim "I know for a fact Ms. Marvel has already written a fan fic about us dating."

"...dating." Brawn repeated, sounding scared by the word.

"Ok so enough dodging, we need to talk about us." Riri said before clearing her throat "I'll start; I like you."

"...And I like you to." Brawn confirmed, he already knew how Riri felt but hearing it said felt new and scary to him.

"So why aren't we a couple? We definitely click, we're both extremely intelligent, you're hot as hell and I've caught you checking me out more than a few times. So why haven't we started going out?" Riri asked, hoping to get Brawn to open up.

"I don't know; because of hero work, because I still have a lab to run in Texas and Iron Man usually needs your help." Brawn listed.

"They're just excuses." Riri replied, sounding irked "Look do you want to know why I want to be with you? You make me feel like I'm not a freak."

"What?" Brawn reacted.

"I graduated high school at 13, finished college by 15, now I'm 18 and apprenticing under Tony Stark. I never got on with kids my own age, I grew up too fast, until I came to The Champions all my friends were adults. When you came and asked me to join the team I felt this instant bond with you, Amadeus. Imagine it, handsome guy in both normal and Hulk form comes into my workshop and starts talking about math as an icebreaker, I could tell we were alike, both young geniuses who wanted to make the world a better place. You're my best friend Amadeus." Riri poured out her heart "I think the reason I didn't take the chance is the stupid cliché about ruining our friendship and whatever, but I want more. I want you."

Brawn was blushing really badly, he was swooning, he wanted to accept her feelings but something was stopping him and he needed to come clean about it "I'm scared of destroying our friendship to, but there's a bigger fear than that."

"And what's that?" Riri asked, concerned by the skittish look on her crush's face.

"I'm scared of me, of the monster inside." Brawn confided "What if I lose control of it again, what if I hurt those closest to me?"

"Wait so the only reason you haven't asked me out is because you think you might hurt me?...God you're dumb." Riri reacted dryly and with a roll of her eyes.

"Hey, I'm being honest here." Brawn blustered.

"No, you're being stupid." Riri stated before marching over taking hold Brawn's hand and stroking her face with it "You would never physically hurt me."

Brawn's blush reached critical at the bold move, Riri's soft skin made his heart melt, he wanted to give in and pull her closer but his fear shackled him "But what if..." He began.

"Don't. Just don't. Take the chance." Riri urged, blushing pretty hard herself as she let go of Brawn's hand.

There was a brief moment of silence, with both of them feeling shy and feeling the heat in their cheeks. Brawn then quietly suggested "I mean if we took it slow it wouldn't be so bad."

Riri's brown eyes lit up as she replied "Yeah, we can take it slow. Go on dates, see how we like it before we commit."

Brawn then awkwardly added "But there is one thing I don't want to wait for."

"Hmm?" Riri sounded.

"I've...I've always wanted to kiss you." Brawn revealed, his heart hammering in his chest.

Riri was loving the bashful look on Brawn's face, she decided to take the lead and pulled on Brawn's shirt to make him lean down so she could get at him. She cupped his face with her heavily worked and rough hands and pressed her lips to his, Brawn shuddered a little but submitted to Riri's dominant kiss, she eased her tongue into his mouth and kissed him deeply. After a dozen or so seconds the kiss ended, both of them feeling the buzz of moment before hugging into one another. "I'm glad I didn't have to wait for that." She smiled cheekily.

"Yeah, that was..." Brawn tried to describe but was lost for words, he hugged Riri tighter and savoured the moment.

(AN/ Ok folks this is where the safe part of the chapter ends, if you want to read the m rated version head to my tumblr Crewefox before the site nukes itself)

000

Kraven the hunter had killed many a beast and man, he prided himself on taking on the most dangerous game and many of these trophies were proudly on display in his numerous hideouts across the world. Even in the garage of an old haulage yard taxidermy animals and human skulls were on pedestals, which appealed to twisted minds. "Ooh this one has trauma to the cranium, with the size of the hole I'm going to guess a spear?" An inquisitive Andi asked, the red haired archer's eyes were adoring all the mementos of Kraven's success.

"You're quite right, Madame Archer." Kraven confirmed, preparing green tea for his fellow villains "That individual was a member was one of Hydra's top operatives, he was an elusive mark."

"This whole place seems dumb." Typhoid Mary griped, the scantily clad mutant was lounging on a expensive leather sofa beside Taskmaster who was sharpening his sword.

"That's not being nice to our host." Taskmaster critiqued, sounding bored of Typhoid's constant nonsense.

"Now, now Taskmaster. Let Typhoid share her opinion." Kraven replied, coming over with a tea tray.

Typhoid shot Taskmaster a smug smile before explaining "Every trophy here is evidence against you for murders, wouldn't it make sense just to destroy them?"

"I do see your point, however when you're already wanted for multiple murders you begin to stop caring." Kraven reasoned, passing Typhoid a cup of green tea.

At that point the multiple security locks to the garage were opened and a frustrated Ronin walked in, took off her sheathed katana from her belt and slammed it on the table. Andi walked over and cooed "Everything all right, snowdrop?"

"Crossbones hasn't left messages at the dead drops and none of our informants have seen any sign of him." Ronin seethed, pulling down her cloth mask and lifting up her goggles.

"The most likely scenario is that he's been captured." Taskmaster said pragmatically.

"Or he's snitching to SHIELD." Typhoid added.

"If he was in SHIELD custody we'd know by now." Kraven spoke "It must be The Champions and their animal allies."

"I though The Champions were on SHIELD's leash?" Taskmaster mused "Maybe they're trying to distance themselves from them."

"Whatever the reason it's a headache for us." Ronin enforced "I've already contacted our employer about this problem."

"If we need to get Crossbones back then let me go and grab him off The Champions and the furries. I'll skin that mommy's girl pretending to be me and wear her as a scarf." Andi half snarled, hating the very idea of any form of 'Luna' still existing.

"No, we wait for our employer's orders." Ronin affirmed.

The sudden vibration of Ronin's smartphone made her jump a little, she got it out and read the screen causing her to say " _Merde,_ it's him." As the golden eyed killed placed her phone on the ground everyone got behind her and kneeled.

A hologram of Doom sitting on his throne emerged from the phone's hidden projector, Ronin bowed her head and greeted "Lord Doom."

"Rise, all of you." Doom instructed and the villains obeyed "Doom has read your latest update, there are both successes and failures."

"Forgive us for our failures, m'lord." Ronin apologised.

"90% of objectives were met, however the remaining 10% is problematic." Doom stated "Crossbones needs to be dealt with, if SHIELD gets wind of Doom's plan then it will be seriously compromised. Crossbones needs to die." Doom explained.

"It will be done." Andi concurred.

"Doom has business to attend you, if there is no more-" Doom began to bid farewell.

"Whoa, hold up." Typhoid spoke up.

"Yes, Typhoid?" Doom replied, sounding more curious than irritated.

"How come I didn't receive my payment like everyone else?" Typhoid asked in a confrontational manner, pointing at her phone.

"Because you failed." Doom answered flatly.

"Well Taskmaster's car bomb didn't kill Parker, how come he got paid?" Typhoid argued.

"Because I succeeded in beheading Octavius." Taskmaster told, crossing his arms.

"Add the fact that you couldn't handle capturing a nine year old child, Doom felt that a lesson need to taught. Succeed in killing Crossbones and you will be paid." Doom offered.

"Screw that, I want my money, I put my ass on the line and you won't pay up ya' cheap bastard!" Typhoid barked, causing Ronin and Kraven to wince with awkwardness, knowing Doom wouldn't condone such insolence.

Doom took a moment before saying in a low but haunting voice "Speak to Doom with such disrespect again and you'll know what happens to people who fail Doo-"

"Ya' wanna' talk about respect? Respect me, pay up asshole!" Typhoid yelled, her fists blazing with flames.

"...Very well, here's your payment." Doom said chillingly.

Before Typhoid Mary could react, she was grabbed by the hair and a dagger glided across her throat, slicing through the flesh and jugular with ease before being released. Typhoid tried to cry out but all that came from her mouth was a gargling noise, she fell to her knees, clasped her hands to her bleeding throat and looked up at her attacker with pure wrath. Andi was stood over her, sniffing the fresh blood on one of her daggers and gleefully singing "Mary, Mary, quite contrary."

Typhoid want to yell 'Bitch!' and attack Andi but in a heartbeat, she lost consciousness and a few seconds later she was dead. Andi inhaled the invigorating coppery smell of Typhoid's spilt blood and gave a dazed smile "Don't worry Lord Doom, Crossbones will be dealt with, just like this failure."

000

Arthur Knight was a mammal with a lot of focus and drive. When he set his mind to something there was no stopping him, so when he wanted to do something other than explore the origins of 'Seren' and his powers he decided on investigating what linked all the missing mammals apart from their powers. He was sat at the dinner table with multiple sheets spread out, typing away at a Bella-powered laptop while Viv helped with any queries regarding this bizarre universe. He looked tired but he kept on going and this was causing the others to worry.

"Has he slept at all?" Olivia asked with a quiet voice, the mouse was sat atop Kodi's head, the wolf was lounging on the sofa with Ms Marvel and Snowguard.

"I don't think so, he's been like that since yesterday afternoon." Ms Marvel whispered.

"Poor guy, he's just trying to help." Kodi sympathised

"He could help by addressing his own powers." Snowguard criticised "I can sense such a powerful energy coming from him."

"We can't force him." Kodi insisted "Look he's doing what he knows to help, he's being a cop and trying to connect the dots."

"Can't you talk to him? You know, wolf to wolf?" Olivia suggested.

"And say what? 'Oh, hey dude maybe you should stop trying to help us and focus on the scary unexplainable power in your body'?" Kodi replied with sarcasm.

The sudden sound of Arthur slamming his fist on the table caused the whispering group to jump "Did he hear us?" Ms Marvel whispered with worry.

"I've cracked it!" Arthur yelled.

"Huh?" Snowguard sounded.

"Arthur has found a common thread between all the mammals kidnapped by Doctor Doom." Viv explained with a satisfied smile.

"What the hell is all the racket?" Luna asked with Robyn beside marching in from another room, the sisters had been sparring during their daily exercise.

"Is everything ok?" Kion questioned, the lion had been napping in his room

"Good, you're here, you all need to hear this!" Arthur said in a frantic manner "I finally got the reason why the mammals were chosen by this Doom bastard."

"Should we get the others?" Kodi asked, thinking the other heroes might want to hear this.

"We can fill em' in later, tell us what's up Arthur." Olivia answered and instructed.

"So, you know how there is multiple versions across the multiverse, there was a human me, there's a human Luna and Alice and so on and so forth? Well I looked The Champions' names up with Bella's database and there's mammal versions of them as well in our world." Arthur explained hastily.

"For real? What kind of mammals?" Snowguard asked, sounding curious.

"Well the Amka Aliyak from our world is still Canadian but she's a reindeer. Amadeus Cho is a hamster, Riri Williams is a Hippo, Miles Morales is a mole, Nadia Van Dyne is a coyote, Viv doesn't have a Zootopia version due to being a synthezoid and Ms Marvel I don't know your name so sorry I couldn't find out what you are." Arthur listed.

"Brawn's a hamster?" Robyn sniggered, not imagining the muscle-bound hero would like his zootopia counterpart.

"So, if I type my name into Bella, she'll tell me what mammal I am?" Ms Marvel asked, itching to know.

"Sure." Arthur shrugged.

Ms Marvel rushed over and quickly typed her name into Bella's database making sure no one saw her real name, once she did she looked irked, clicked off the page and groused "I'm a freaking skunk."

"What's wrong with skunks?" Kion asked, wondering why the Champions' leader was disappointed.

"Yeah Skunks are hot...don't tell Hannah I said that." Robyn commented.

"They smell." Ms Marvel griped.

"Can we focus?" Olivia called for everyone's attention "Arthur please continue."

"Right, well I asked Viv to run the names of kidnapped mammals through her memory banks and there are no human versions of them in this universe." Arthur revealed.

"Wait, what?" Kodi reacted "So there isn't a human Clara?"

"No, none of them. No human Jason or Brenda or any others." Arthur confirmed.

"The only anomaly is Zoe Nightfall-Rojek, she does have an inhuman counterpart but the flying fox version of her was likely taken so Doom could extract information about Zootopia's defences." Viv theorised.

"Zoe's an inhuman?" Luna mumbled.

"An inhuman who works for SHIELD." Viv added, passing a piece of paper to the vixen.

Luna quickly scanned the sheet, the inhuman's Zoe portrait showed a woman of Indian decent wearing a serious expression unlike the happy go lucky persona of her bat counterpart. But Luna's mouth went dry when she saw Zoe's codename 'Dragoness'. It was the name Captain America had told her to look up, the person who knew the most about Andi was another version of Zoe. Luna controlled her emotions and asked, "So if the none of the kidnapped mammals have no human versions, what does it mean?"

"I don't know but I bet that's why Doom got his mercs to target scientists." Olivia hypothesised.

"It must have something to do with their powers." Arthur mused "They must be unique or something."

"You might be on to something there." Snowguard agreed "Maybe we should ask the scientists taking refuge at The Avengers' compound?"

Before any more suggestions could be made the front door opened and in strolled the victorious looking trio of Alice, Bullet and Spiderman. "Good afternoon everyone." Alice spoke, seeming pleased with herself.

"Shouldn't you three be helping Rocket guard Crossbones?" Snowguard asked.

"No need, he's handing him over to Coulson and his team as we speak." Bullet clarified.

"So, you got him to sing?" Robyn smirked.

"Like a bird." Alice grinned.

"Well don't stand on ceremony, what did he say?" Luna prompted her wife, tucking the info on 'Dragoness' in her pocket.

"Doom's mercenaries are pooling their resources and sharing their various hideouts, they move between them every twelve hours to avoid detection. Crossbones has given the locations of all his and all the other ones he knows, it isn't a full list but we can start raiding them with the help of SHIELD and The Avengers." Alice answered, holding up a notepad full of addresses and coordinates.

"What about the second rift? Any word on that?" Kion asked.

"Only Ronin and Andi know the exact location, Crossbones and the others were blindfolded and taken there but we know for a fact that it's in an abandoned subway tunnel." Alice answered.

"But that could be anywhere in New York." Ms Marvel sighed.

"I can start investigating likely locations." Viv volunteered.

"But the rift is not the only thing that's down there." Spiderman stated, "There's about five hundred Doombots as well."

"Five hundred?!" Snowguard gasped.

"Yeah, Alice got Crossbones to spill all the details on them." Spiderman added.

"The Doombots are not just mindless killing machines, they're a hive consciousness, they adapt and learn from every fight and share it among themselves. So, one tactic we used to defeat them won't work again." Alice explained.

"Wait, so if I try to hack one of them with my wand like I did when we saved Moon Girl..." Kodi began to ask.

"They would've most likely figured out a way to block your wand's signal." Alice answered pre-emptively.

"So, all of my tech... damn it." Kodi cursed.

"Hey, don't worry dude, you're more than your gadgets, you're a kick ass fighter." Robyn consoled.

"You defeated me when we first met." Viv reminded.

"And you and I were the only ones left standing when we fought Doom's mercs." Luna added.

"Plus, you saved Doctor Strange and Moon Girl from Typhoid Mary." Snowguard smiled.

"Thanks guys but we know it's not going to be enough." Kodi replied, taking Olivia off of his head and letting her step onto the coffee table, he then walked off towards his bedroom.

"Kodi." Spiderman called after.

"Leave him be, he's thinking about Clara." Bullet advised, knowing her best friend well.

"Let him sulk for a while and before you know it he'll be back and ready to kick some Doombot ass." Robyn assured The Champions.

"So, we need to focus on finding this subway station..." Olivia continued the conversation.

In Kodi's bedroom the dark furred wolf was looking at the photo of him and Clara on his phone again, ever since he became a crime fighter he had struggled with his confidence, with the fact that he had no powers, that he wasn't super smart like Olivia or Luna, that he wasn't trained from a young age like Alice. He had only become a hero to help his friends and help Zootopians after The Wave, he always played the confident and cocky hero but deep down he knew everything was down to dumb luck. Kodi was undeniable fearless and would throw himself into danger without any regard for his own wellbeing but this mission felt different. As the Mage he had always been fighting for someone else's cause but for the first time in his hero career he was fighting for something important to him and that scared him, being cocky and saying quips wasn't going to beat Doom, his mercenaries or his army of Doombots. He needed to be sure of this victory, he needed to up his arsenal, he needed to be an effective member of team instead of liability. Kodi went over to the small desk in his room and picked up the business card that Doctor Strange had given him the day before, the wolf didn't like the arrogant sorcerer very much but if he was going to be strong enough to defeat Doom he would need Strange's help. Kodi swallowed his pride, dialled the number and pressed his phone to his ear. A few seconds later Strange's voice answered " **Hello."**

"Doctor Strange, this is Kodi Jones, the wolf from yesterday." Kodi greeted.

" **Ah yes, The Mage. I trust you're calling me because of my offer."** Strange replied, sounding content.

"Yeah, is the offer still on the table?" Kodi asked.

" **Of course, we can start right away, I'm free today."** Strange answered.

"Great, give me your address and I'll make my way over." Kodi said, happy the avenger hadn't changed his mind.

" **Oh, there's no need for that."** Strange said blankly.

"What?" Kodi said, confused. Out of nowhere the sound of embers crackling caught the wolf's attention, he looked down at his feet to see a ring of orange sparks had encircled him on the carpet "What the fu-" suddenly Kodi dropped through the floor and into the abyss before the ring closed up leaving an empty room.

(DUN DUN DUN! Where did Kodi go? Will Crossbones survive? What is Clara's plan? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Kodi is faced with the horrors of real magic, Viv gets jealous, Andi strikes back and little Aaron tries to help. Ok so I know I just had a week break but christmas is coming up and I'm working at the hospital all the way up to christmas eve and then i intend to spend christmas with my family, it's been a rough year and we need to be together so please be patient and wait until Dec 31st for the next update of this fic. Please review and have a wonderful christmas folks!...)


	26. Stilettos, Secrets and Sorcery

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox with the first chapter of The Broken Mirror chapter of 2019! Happy New Year Folks! Sorry, not sorry, about not uploading yesterday I was hanging out with my family before I went partying with my friends, I got in at 4am and have just woke up. Anyway I hope you all had a very nice xmas and thank you for your patience over the wait. So seeing as Tumblr has nuked itself and hardly anyone uses it anymore I will be also using twitter to post new Take a Stand updates, arts, Q&As, etc... my twitter handle is FoxCrewe so check it out. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 25- Stilettos, Secrets and Sorcery.**

Kodi felt a jolt of fear as he fell through the ring of fire. He would've screamed with panic if he was looking around him with wonder. Along with the sparks of fire that whirled around him he could see twinkling stars in the black void beyond along with vast galaxies and colourful nebulas. But the wolf's awe was brought to the abrupt stop when he blinked and landed in a comfy antique armchair.

"What the hell..." Kodi panted, stunned.

"Hello, Mage." Doctor Strange crooned, Kodi looked across from where he was sitting to see the relaxed sorcerer supreme sipping a cup of green tea.

"S-Strange?" Kodi spoke, he looked at his surrounding to see he was in some sort of library/museum, with books stuffing the mahogany bookshelves and odd trinkets displayed in glass cabinets. Instead of asking a string of dumb questions the wolf caught his breath and guessed "Magic teleportation portal?"

"A simple but extremely useful spell." Strange confirmed before adding "I am pleased that you've accepted my offer, however I am surprised that it took you so long to call, most people who are given the opportunity to learn magic say yes without hesitation. You Mr. Jones waited a over a day."

"It was a tough decision." Kodi answered truthfully.

"May I ask what tipped the scales?" Strange queried.

"...My old tricks; my hacking wand, my shield, even my invisibility they won't work against Doom and his army. The Doombots adapt after a defeat, so even though I helped defeat some yesterday I won't be able to do the same tactic again." Kodi confided.

"So you desire power?" Strange asked, sounding indifferent.

"Yes." Kodi nodded "To help my friends, to defeat Doom and save Clara."

"And yet I still detect reluctance in your voice," Strange pointed out "it's almost like you don't want to learn magic."

"I do, really." Kodi stressed.

"But?" Strange prompted.

"I'm...I'm not sure if I'm the right mammal to have such a power." Kodi confessed, laying bare his doubts.

"You don't think you're worthy?" Strange scoffed.

"Not that." Kodi dismissed "Look I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, I was a straight D student, I didn't go to college and the only thing I've ever been good at is either racing cars or fixing them."

"I'd say you're rather good at being a hero, I've seen that first hand." Strange tried to encourage the black and white furred wolf "Including yourself, there are three members of your team without powers who are still effective heroes."

"But I'm not smart like Luna or Olivia, they're both geniuses." Kodi countered "The only reason I'm good at being a hero is down to dumb luck."

"So you're afraid of what you'll do with magic if you learn to wield it?" Strange dug deeper.

"Yes, how do I know I won't fly off the handle and really hurt someone with magic?" Kodi fretted.

"You don't. All I can offer you is knowledge, self control is up to you. But from what I've witnessed I'd say your instincts are aligned with doing the right thing." Strange reassured "So with that being said." Strange then snapped his fingers and the two were suddenly outside a large wooden door that looked to be in the same building.

"Jesus." Kodi hissed "Couldn't we have just walked?"

"Forgive me, it's a habit of mine." Strange replied, not sounding apologetic in the slightest.

"So what's in there, your training room?" Kodi asked, recovering his bearings.

"Of sorts." Strange shrugged "I have a rather packed schedule for your training regime, the first week we'll be focusing on harnessing magical energy from around you as well as basic teleportation, then in week two we can..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Kodi cut in "I'm sorry Doctor Strange, there must be some misunderstanding, me and other Ceartais members are against the clock to find the kidnapped mammals before Camelot bundles through the rift."

"I am well aware of your time constraints." Strange replied, opening the double doors into a circular shape room with a quintet of corridors leading into different directions "This is the tempus dormitory, within these halls I will gift you with the teachings that were taught to me years ago."

"But we don't have enough time, I thought you could just give me a crash course in basic magic." Kodi pressed.

"There are no crash courses even with the most rudimentary of magic," Strange corrected "and as for time, well this room will remove those shackles."

"Come again?" Kodi reacted, tilting his head in a very canine way.

"With a simple ritual the walls of the tempus dormitory break free of time, one year in this dorm equals only six hours outside the door." Strange explained.

"Wait a year!?" Kodi exclaimed.

"Yes." Strange nodded "This dormitory is equipped with beds, showers and a library of essential reading for any student sorcerer. The only condition is that once the doors are closed they cannot be opened for a full three hundred and sixty five days."

"Just me give a sec to process this." Kodi reacted, feeling suddenly pressured.

"Second thoughts again?" Strange sighed "If you don't think you can handle the strain of the training then you can walk away, I won't take it as an offence."

Kodi thought about the bizarre proposal, the thought of being away from his friends, family and Clara for a year frightened him but he also knew that if he didn't take this opportunity that there was a distinct possibility that the team would fail against Doom and Clara would be lost forever. He let his instincts answer for him "Screw it, I'm in."

"Good." Strange smiled before walking over to a nearby table and lifting up a stiletto dagger "Now for the ritual."

"What kind of ritual?" Kodi asked, wary of the dagger.

"A blood one of course, you see a life must be taken in order for the tempus dormitory to activate, it runs on the time that the life would have had if it had died naturally." Strange explained.

"You're going to kill someone!?" Kodi half shouted.

"Not someone, something." Strange corrected, lifting his cloak to reveal a naked and unevolved billy goat.

Kodi deliberately looked away from the naked goat and snapped "Cover him up, will ya'?"

Strange ignored Kodi's request and continued with "Now seeing as it's your first step on your journey to becoming a sorcerer why don't you sacrifice the goat?" flipping the knife in his hand and holding out the handle to Kodi.

"What? Kill the goat!? You want me to commit murder?!" Kodi exclaimed, his fur standing on end.

"It's hardly murder, this animal isn't even sentient, it's just like a chicken or a fish being prepared for dinner." Strange replied.

"I went to school with goats! I don't care if this one is 'Savage', I'm not killing it!" Kodi barked.

"Oh very well, I'll do it." Strange groaned, grabbing the goat by its horns and crouching.

"No!" Kodi yelled, shooting forward and snatching the stiletto out of Strange's grip.

"Hmm, disappointing." Strange groused "You want to learn magic but not willing to make a sacrifice for it."

"Damn straight." Kodi gave a low growl, tossing the dagger away "If I have to kill in order to get power then I don't want it."

"Try explaining that your Clara and her fellow captives." Strange sniped.

Kodi felt indecision for just a moment but he regained his composure and replied "When I see Clara again I want to be the mammal she knows, not a murderer...Goodbye Doctor Strange." Kodi turned on his hell and went to march out of the dormitory only for the doors to slam shut and glow with a green aura, the wolf quickly turned around to the goat was gone and a wide smile on Strange's face "Where's the goat?" Kodi demanded.

"There never was a goat, I wanted to see what kind of person you are." Strange answered smugly.

"That...That was a test?" Kodi gawped.

Strange walked towards the wolf while responding "A soul who will do anything for power is one that should be feared but someone who values others above his own needs has more potential. So Mr. Jones, shall we begin?"

Kodi shook off the annoyance of being tricked and simply answered "Yeah."

000

Andi was munching on an apple as she lay on top of a water tower in Brooklyn, waiting for her signal. Forty minutes earlier, Ronin had received a tip off from a snitch within SHIELD that Crossbones had been handed over to the authorities and that he was going to be transferred to SHIELD headquarters for questioning at exactly 5pm. There were two routes to the compound, by air and by road. Luckily for Andi it was by road on this occasion but the archer assassin or her fellow mercenaries weren't foolish enough to take on an armed convoy of SHIELD operatives. There was no guarantee of success and in a city like New York it would take long for a superhero to show up. Andi quickly thought up with an alternative; she knew that SHIELD prisoner transport vans were both bullet and bomb proof but that they also had a covered ventilation hatch with an extremely narrow opening for air to pass through and that's where her twisted attack would begin. " **Lady Archer, the convoy has just turned onto your street, approximately 600 metres away."** Kraven's voice informed through her ear piece " **Happy hunting."**

"Thank you, Kraven." Andi replied sweetly, setting her apple down and standing up on top of the water tower. She looked down at the busy street to see a blue light convoy of six armoured SUVs with the prisoner transport in the middle moving steadily through the traffic that was moved aside to let them pass. Even though she was dressed in her alluring mission attire she was confident the convoy couldn't see her, she had picked this spot due the setting sun behind her, making it difficult for the SHIELD agents to see anything but sun glare. Andi selected a new experimental arrow from her quiver and gave a giddy smile as she drew it with her bow, it was another night howler arrow but instead of it being a standard liquid based weapon she had developed it to be a gas, not very effective in the open but in a confined space, such as a van, it could affect every occupant. Andi lined up her shot and aimed for the covered ventilation shaft, the gap was less than 3cm, the van was travelling at 40mph but Andi had no doubt she'd miss. She let the arrow fly and watched it whistle through the air before finding it's mark and wedging in the narrow gap, the archer then sat back down picked up her half eaten apple and waited for the show to begin.

It took twelve seconds for the prisoner transport van to come to a screeching halt, Andi gave an involuntary excited squeak as the first whiffs of spilt blood reached her nostrils, her mutation could sniff out blood from nearly a mile away and right now there was a lot being shed in the back of the armoured van. The rest of the convoy suddenly braked and agents came pouring out of the SUVs with their sidearms brandished, Andi recognised the familiar figure of Phil Coulson and smirked "Gotta' a little present for ya' Coulson."

Two SHIELD agents opened the back of the prisoner van and one of them was instantly pounced upon by a savage female agent who buried her thumbs into the other agent's eye sockets, then a lifeless body was tossed out of the van knocking over a trio of armed agents before the crazed and primal form of the unmasked Crossbones leapt out and charged at Coulson. The SHIELD veteran had no qualms about shooting the merc but it took five bullets to drop him, even from a distance the scent of Crossbones' fresh blood energised Andi "Nighty night, Rumlow."

" **Mission complete, meet up at my safehouse, code SL22."** Taskmaster's voice echoed in Andi's ear piece.

"Gimme' a minute, the smell is exquisite." Andi whined.

" **Not now,** _ **mon amour.**_ **Return to Taskmaster's coordinates and I'll reward you."** Ronin promised over the comm link.

"...Fine." Andi huffed, tossing her eaten apple off the roof, she wanted to stay and enjoy her kill but she wouldn't dare cross her wife.

000

Alice was determined to enjoy her pregnancy despite the circumstances. Since picking her litter's potential names with Luna it felt even more real even if the rapidly growing baby bump felt very real to her. She didn't like to grumble given the situation with the kidnapped mammals but she needed to go the bathroom a lot more lately due to her unborn kits pressing on her bladder, her boobs were sore and she was finding it extremely hard to keep her paws off Luna. Alice was fully aware that her wife was second in command of the team and it would be selfish of her to drag her off every other moment for a make out session and a quickie. Lucky for the blooming doe there was one distraction; food.

During her stay at the SHIELD safehouse the rabbit had cleaned out all the fruits and vegetables out of the fridge, which was restocked on a weekly basis so when she got the hankering for an early evening snack all that left in the fridge was poultry and fish leaving the vegetarian Alice antsy. Luna offered to take Alice out for a snack but Alice quickly reminded her wife that over in this dimension they were penniless, lucky for the couple Spiderman overheard their conversation and handed over twenty dollars and the location of a bakery across the street that was famous for it's carrot cake. The vixen and doe bunny took the money and the suggestion and made their way over to the bakery, with Alice wolfing down four huge slices of carrot cake while Luna was quite content with her blueberry muffin trying her best to ignore the strange looks they were getting from other patrons and the whispers of 'They must be mutants', 'Nah they must be from where Howard The Duck is from' and 'OMG are they a lesbian couple? That's so cute'.

When the two returned to the SHIELD owned building they were greeted with polite nods from the usual agents who guarded the place but were greeted by a friendly masked face when they stepped out of the elevator. Spiderman was climbing through the hallway's window holding a canvas shopping bag "Spiderman." Luna chirped "That bakery was fantastic, thank you so much for treating us."

"No problem." Spiderman smiled "My _Abuelita_ would take me there all the time when I was a kid."

"You still are a kid." Luna teased.

"Stop it." Alice cautioned, playfully swatting her beloved's arm before asking Spiderman "I had no idea you were Latino?"

"Well half Hispanic actually." Spiderman shrugged "Anyway I told my Mom that I had a pregnant friend who was craving some veggies, so she gave me these from the community garden." the masked hero holding up the canvas bag.

Alice zipped over and looked in the bag to find carrots, cucumbers, aubergines, radishes, parsnips and whole host of other produce in the stuffed bag, Alice happily hopped up and dragged Spiderman down into a crouch before pulling the bottom half of his mask up and kissing him on the cheek and whispering " _Merci_ Miles."

"No worries." Spiderman laughed off, pulling down his mask.

"Wait so your mom didn't freak out when you told her you had a pregnant friend?" Luna asked.

"My parents know I'm Spiderman, they also read the Daily Bugle and how the mammals from the other dimension are a 'Menace'." Spiderman answered while trying to do his J. Jonah Jameson impression "When I told her there was pregnant rabbit in Team Ceartais, she just loaded me up with all these veggies."

"Please tell your mother thank you from me, it is greatly appreciated." Alice added politely.

"Ok, I guess we better see if Viv and Arthur have come up with anything about the subway station Crossbones mentioned." Luna said lazily, opening the door to the apartment only to be met with a sight that made her yell "What the hell!?"

The Vixen staggered back her amber eyes locked on the figure before her, it was Olivia Dawson, her best friend since childhood but the mouse was no longer confined to her tiny stature, she was tall as a human "Hey Luna." Olivia grinned.

"What in the actual fu-" Luna gawped.

"Olivia!?" Alice gave an excited gasp "How on earth!?"

"That was me, not sorry." A mischievous voice replied, Wasp then popped her out from behind the enlarged Olivia "We experimented with my size manipulating disks and hey presto, a five foot five mouse!"

"Of course Nadia is responsible for this." Spiderman sighed, used to his teammate's antics "Wait, when did you get out of the infirmary!?"

"A few hours ago, I couldn't stand it anymore." Wasp vented, the heroine was already dressed in shrinking suit.

"This is..." Luna babbled, dumbstruck by the fact she had to look up at her best friend.

"Wait Lu, hold that expression." Robyn grinned, recording the entire moment on her phone from the sofa with Hannah, Kion and a chuckling MS.

"Robbie." Luna hissed at her little sister.

"Another sweet thing Wasp created was this." Olivia smiled devilishly before Wasp touched Luna's arm with a small disc, suddenly Luna shrunk down to the size of a mouse.

"What!?" Luna yelled, abruptly finding herself with a tiny frame and looking up at everyone.

"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!" Robyn laughed hard.

"This is priceless." Kion chortled.

"Turn me back right now!" Luna demanded, her foot stomp not even making a noise.

"Oh Luna you look so cute!" Olivia gushed.

"Don't call me cute! I'm from a bunny family!" Luna reacted.

Luna then found herself being scooped up by a pair of white paws and a French voice cooing "Then as a bunny allow me to say; you are extremely cute."

"Alice." Luna whined, trying to stop herself being entrapped by the beautiful and giant form of her wife.

"So you headed back the mobile bunker to grab your gear?" Spiderman asked Wasp "How was Ironheart, she's working on Robyn's suit isn't she?"

"Y-yeah. She was busy, so I didn't want to bother her." Wasp replied way too quickly, her eyes aimed at the floor.

This odd response cause an exchange of puzzled looks between the Champions in the room, including Snowguard and Viv who were at the large dining table helping Arthur with his investigation. "You got anything to add, Wasp?" Snowguard probed.

"No." Wasp spoke.

Ms. Marvel then sniffed deliberately and said "Smells like bull poop to me."

"Guys..." Wasp said, feeling more awkward by the second leaving Team Ceartais to wonder what the hell was going on.

Snowguard sauntered over to the out of character skittish Wasp and asked "Nadia, you wouldn't be holding onto a very juicy bit of gossip would you?"

"Well I...that's not my business to say!" Wasp defied, crossing her arms.

"So there is gossip!" Spiderman pointed his finger at Wasp.

"Hold on, I haven't seen Brawn since this morning..." Ms Marvel began before her brown eyes grew wide.

"No way...They finally..." Snowguard spoke, thinking only of a kiss but not of actually what transpired.

"Oh..." Viv suddenly sounded before saying "Excuse me, my father is calling me." The synthezoid then quickly rose and phased through the ceiling, her monotone had convinced everyone else in the room except one and soon enough that person found themselves looking on the roof of the building finding Viv looking at the fresh nightscape, with sunset only occurring a few minutes before.

"You ok, Vivian?" Olivia asked, still shaky on her enlarged legs, Wasp told her she only had about 3 minutes left in this size before she'd faint.

"I am fine. I was just ending my call to my father." Viv lied.

"That's bollocks girl, and you know it." Olivia said, trying to stay focused.

"The thing Wasp spoke of, it distressed me." Viv confessed.

"Brawn and Ironheart are in a relationship, isn't that what you wanted?" Olivia asked, remembering a conversation nearly a week ago.

"Yes...Logically it was a sound reasoning but now that it's happened..." Viv answered, fiddling with her green hair.

"Ok who do you like? Amadeus or Riri?" Olivia asked bluntly, feeling weak in her legs.

"...It's complex." Viv dodged.

"Ugh, then make it simple." Olivia implored.

Viv tried to steady herself and said "When this team began Amadeus voiced his affections for me, we even kissed on an occasion but I found I was I wasn't attracted to males."

"And Brawn took it badly?" Olivia assumed.

"On the contrary; Amadeus was very understanding and encouraged me to find a girlfriend, he truly is a great friend." Viv corrected.

"So you've a got a thing for Riri?" Olivia sympathised.

"Yes." Viv confirmed "A few weeks before you came through the rift I initiated a kiss after a mission, it did not go well."

"Viv. I'm so sorry." Olivia said with a pant, putting a comforting paw on the AI's shoulder.

"Don't be. I knew Riri was straight yet I still fell for her...heroes never have it easy with love anyway." Viv replied, noticing how tired Olivia looked.

Oliva frowned before saying "Take it from a hero who's been in the game longer than you, when it comes to love don't second guess yourself, when you feel that fire you embrace it, don't be an idiot like me."

"Why are you an idiot?" Viv asked, amazed how Ceartias' team leader seemed so vulnerable.

"I had a guy that I loved, his name was Blake, but I put being a hero over my own heart and I lost him." Olivia admitted, still feeling the twinge in her heart over her separation from her rat "It's been a year but it still hurts...I still love him."

Viv noticed that Olivia had one of shrink discs peeking out of her tartan skirt pockets and swiped it before touching it to Olivia's fur, returning the mouse to her normal size and making her more awake, Viv then picked her up "So what is your advice, little mouse?"

"Support Riri and Amadeus, no matter what. But leave your heart open for a beauty to snare it, you're a wonderful person Viv and would make any girl very happy." Olivia breathed, still feeling tired.

"I'll try." Viv replied meekly.

000

The back of the van was a bloodbath, out of the five agents who were guarding Crossbones only one had survived and she had killed a fellow agent when she leapt from the van, she had been taken to the SHIELD infirmary where she would be given the night howler vaccine that Alice had provided after the incident with the X Men. Coulson looked at the very bloody crime scene and gave a worried sigh, if night howler could do this much damage with a small group of people he shuddered to think what a large dose could do to a crowd. As the forensic scientists assessed the van, two workers from the coroner's office wheeled Crossbones' corpse away "And there goes our lead." An annoyed voice said behind Coulson.

Coulson recognised the voice and cursed internally before turning around, it was an Indian American woman in her late twenties with streaks of blue, pink and purple in her glossy black hair, she wore stylish black framed glasses and her face and ears had numerous piercings as decoration. She wore a SHIELD tank top and combat pants but the thing most notable about this woman were the pair of dragon like wings that protruded from her back, they were huge when they were folded so one could imagine their size when she spread her wings. The left wing had some notable scarring along with a large section being made of a synthetic material, clearly the result of a past injury, there was also scarring on the reptilian tail that swished behind her. This woman was an inhuman who worked for SHIELD, special agent Zoe Nightfall-Rojek otherwise known as...

"Dragoness." Coulson greeted curtly.

"You should have transported Rumlow by air, I could've provided support." Dragoness criticised.

"Then Doom's mercenaries would've used missiles to take the chopper down." Coulson countered before asking "What are you doing here, Zoe? Hill told you stay away from this case."

"Director Hill has had a change of heart after this shit show." Dragoness replied, motioning to the crime scene "How did the night howler get into the van?"

"We found an arrow wedged into the ventilation panel, it's design matches Andi's arsenal." Coulson answered.

"So we have a snitch within our ranks who told Andi the route, then manages to hit a very small target while it's moving, I bet that bitch loved this hit." Dragoness simmered "Did you get any info from Crossbones."

"We didn't but The Champions did, they're keeping it to themselves though, given the fact that we have more leaks than the Titanic." Coulson justified.

"I notice that you neglected to mention the furry friends of The Champions." Dragoness pointed out "I need to talk with them."

"You see this is why I told Hill to keep you away from this case, it's too personal for you." Coulson commented.

"I'm fully aware that the animal versions of Ronin and Andi are heroes, you don't have to worry about me going off on them." Dragoness replied, but that didn't convince Coulson.

"Luna Wilde is not anything like Andi and the rabbit version of Alice is an expecting mother, I need you to promise me you won't harass them." Coulson warned.

"I promise nothing," Dragoness waved off "if we're going to find the real Ronin and Andi we need the closest thing to them, that fox and rabbit can think like those monsters. So I don't care if I upset them, I'm going to bring Andi and Ronin down. And before you say anything Hill has given me clearance to interrogate them."

"What do you expect them to know? They're from a city called Zootopia not New York, they're heroes not assassins." Coulson slung back.

"If they can give just the slightest clue to finding them bitches then it'll be worth it." Dragoness said forcefully, she then spread her wings and added "Tell them I'm coming for a little chat tomorrow morning, 9am." Dragoness then flew into the air and back towards the SHIELD headquarters leaving a worried Coulson on the ground wondering if the inhuman was focused more on her mission or simple revenge.

000

In the Brother Bear children's home there was a little Koala who was feeling on top of the world right now, after his and Mufasa's heroics at the library his grandma Judy took him back to children's home herself and stayed and played with her new grandson for a while. Once the bunny doe was gone Aaron found himself the centre of attention among the other kids, yesterday they had all feared him but now they thought he was the coolest kid in the whole of Zootopia, they let him join in with games, invited to the cool kids table in the dining room instead of sitting on his own and he was allowed to pick the bedtime story that the social worker Kenai would read to the children. Now Aaron was tucked up in bed with a huge smile on his face but he no intention of sleeping because under his pillow was the book of Seren. The magic book that had spoke to him the library, the book that could help his moms and the other Ceartais heroes. Aaron knew his moms were in some strange other world but they needed to know about this book, he took the book out from under his pillow before lying back down and holding it to his chest. Aaron closed his eyes and focused on thoughts about his moms, he didn't know how his powers worked but he knew if he pictured their faces and felt for their presence that soon enough...

Aaron opened his eyes and found himself in the apartment where he had 'visited' Robyn before except this time it was lit up and he was standing beside a sofa with a group of people watching a movie on the TV. He could see his mothers as well as some other mammals but there were also some strange looking creatures he had never seen before but for some reason he knew he didn't need to fear them. All of them hadn't noticed him so he said loudly and brightly "Hello!" everyone turned to him and let out a yelp of shock and surprise.

"Aaron!?" Robyn gasped, holding onto Hannah tightly.

(AN/ So what did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror Aaron unintentionally causes Arthur to face his problems, The Dragoness meets with the team, Clara and Zoe form an escape plan and Ms Marvel stumbles onto a secret. Please review, check out my twitter and c ya soon!)


	27. Reintroductions

(AN/Hey folks here's another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Thank you so much for all your lovley reviews and messages carrying onto into 2019! Please be sure to follow my twitter FoxCrewe to check out the art of this fic, this week includes a fresh look at Kodi. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 26- Reintroductions.**

If there was a walking, talking definition of a reluctant leader it was Ms Marvel. The sixteen year old inhuman was elected as the team leader by group consensus when she first proposed the idea of The Champions when Nova and Cyclops were still part of the fledgling group, she had intended for Viv or Cyclops to take on the role but she had misjudged how to other young heroes looked to her for guidance. Ms Marvel had voiced many times to her teammates that she wasn't a leader but despite this everyone still treated her as one, including The Avengers and SHIELD, she was the first point of contact for all problems involving The Champions and it grated on her nerves. So when Coulson had called and her told her about Crossbones' death as well as five SHIELD agents it was another headache for the young heroine, she felt bad for the families of the dead agents and would've liked to see Crossbones go to trial but things in the superhero game never went to plan. Yet again Ms Marvel was tasked with breaking the bad news to everyone as well that a special investigator appointed by Director Hill would be visiting tomorrow. Usually as team leader she would go to the fresh crime scene with one of the tech savvy team mates like Viv or Wasp and search for clues but tonight she wasn't going to do that, tonight all Ms Marvel wanted to do was hang out with her friends from both her dimension and the Zootopian one.

"Why are we having a movie night again?" Robyn asked as she was lead down the aisle of a second hand store that sold DVDs, games and books.

"To cheer everyone up, we've not really hung out as friends since you came through the rift." Ms Marvel replied, ignoring the amazed looks of her fellow customers. The inhuman had brought Robyn along to gauge the tastes of the interdimensional mammals.

"Well we have been against the clock." Robyn shrugged, reading a text message from Kodi saying he was hanging out with Doctor Strange "I suppose it would be nice to unwind. I'm guessing The Champions have movie nights a lot?"

"Yeah, we try and do Dungeons and Dragons nights to but it's finding a time when everyone's free that's the problem." Ms Marvel answered, picking up a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark "Ok here's a classic from the 80s, action adventure blockbuster where an archaeologist must battle Nazis to stop them using an ancient artefact."

"Sounds good but what's a Nazi?" Robyn queried back, never hearing the term.

"No Nazis in your world, huh? Lucky you, so let's not open that can of worms." Ms Marvel smiled awkwardly, putting the DVD back "What's movies does Ceartais likes?"

"Well Hannah's a sucker for the cheesiest rom coms, Luna's always been a horror fan, Olivia is a sci fi nut, Kodi likes anything with explosions and she-wolves not wearing a lot of clothes, Kion doesn't really have a preference and Alice loves anything anime." Robyn rattled off, looking at the cover for Enter the Dragon and chuckling at the fact that Bruce Lee wasn't a tiger.

"And what about you?" Ms Marvel asked while waving at excited little boy who was starstruck by the superheroine.

"Those." Robyn smiled, pointing at a shelf lined with Disney films. Despite 'Cinderelephant' being Cinderella and 'Floatzen' being Frozen the Disney fan felt happy to know that some of her favourite movies still existed in this dimension.

"You're a Disney fan? Never had you down as the type." Ms Marvel reacted, sounding puzzled.

"I used to be embarrassed about it, y'know being a 'tough girl' and all. But I've learned to embrace it, I even wore a princess tiara to my own wedding." Robyn reminisced.

"So not only a Disney fan, a Disney princess fangirl." Ms Marvel grinned, surprised by this side of scrappy hybrid "So which one is your favourite?"

"Well I'm always stuck between two, I love Princess...wait what the hell is that?" Robyn started to answer but then her eyes fell on a disney movie she had never seen, on the cover was a cartoon red fox wearing a medieval era green tunic with a yellow hat atop his head with a red feather decorating it, the fox was stood on what looked to be a castle wall armed with a bow and arrow but it was the title that gave her chills "Robin Hood?" Robyn whispered, lifting the DVD off the shelf.

"Oh I haven't seen that movie since I was little." Ms Marvel smiled but it soon faded when she saw the freaked out look on Robyn's face.

"Is this a joke?" Robyn asked aloud, flipping the case around and reading the back only to be met with cartoon caricatures of mammals that looked very much like her grandparents and family friend Little John.

"What you don't have that movie where you're from?" Ms Marvel guessed somewhat right, although she was unsure why the hybrid looked so distressed "It's just a cartoon about the Robin Hood legend."

"Legend?" Robyn sounded, her ears going droopy.

"Yeah, that legend's been made into movies and tv shows for years; Robin Hood and his merry men, Maid Marian, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor." Ms Marvel summarised.

Robyn's mind was being blown, she wanted to call out all the absurd things Ms Marvel had just said but she knew that she wasn't the only one who needed to see this, Luna and the other did to "Can we buy this?" Robyn asked anxiously.

Ms Marvel ignored Robyn's expression and just shrugged "Sure."

Ms Marvel didn't just buy the Disney classic, she also selected crowd pleasers like Star Wars: A New Hope and The Thing. The two heroines then made their way back to the SHIELD safehouse but the entire way Robyn entranced by the DVD case, trying to take in every detail and kept rereading the blurb over and over, when they arrived back at the apartment Robyn walked through the door and immediately called for her big sister "Lu. Lu, where are you?"

"In the kitchen." Luna replied, Robyn swiftly turned the corner of the open plan room to see the vixen at the stove, stood on a step stirring a pot while Alice was sat on the counter munching on some celery that Spiderman's mom had sent with the veggie care package "I'm just making some Buunyburrow veggie stew for everyone, although I think the pizzas Wasp ordered will be more popular. How was the movie hunt?"

"Eye opening." Robyn said "Look at this." stepping over and showing Luna the DVD case.

The archer's amber eyes grew large, she nearly dropped the wooden spoon she was stirring the stew with, she then looked her younger sibling in the eye and asked "Is this a joke?"

Three minutes later everyone in the spacious SHIELD safehouse were gathered around the dining table except Kodi, Brawn and Iron Heart. The group were staring at the DVD case in the centre of the table "So let me get this clear in my head; in this world Robin Hood is a legend from medieval England?" Olivia asked, perplexed by this revelation.

"Yeah, everyone knows that legend, in fact most people think Robin of Locksley was a real person, he wasn't though." Wasp clarified.

"Robin of Locksley?" Kion scoffed "This just keeps getting weirder."

"Why are you all tripping over a Disney movie?" Spiderman asked on behalf of the confused humans.

Arthur who was slightly annoyed that his investigation into possible locations for the second rift was being interrupted answered with "In our world, Robin Loxley aka The Hood along with his wife Marian Wilde, The Maid were outlaw vigilantes. They were both red foxes and they gave their lives stopping a terrorist attack that would've killed thousands in Zootopia."

"Whoa, they were superheroes? That's amazing." Snowguard praised but then realised and asked Luna and Robyn "Wait, Wilde? Isn't that your family name?"

"They were our grandparents." Luna answered, picturing the happy faces of the young-at-heart couple "Robyn was named after granddad."

"No matter how much mammals say they were heroes, they were still just nana and granddad to us." Robyn said, looking at the engagement ring on her finger that had once belonged to Marian.

"Team Ceartais was Marian's idea, she wanted it to be a better, more law-abiding version of the MM gang." Olivia told, remembering the first time Marian approached her about the crazy idea.

"So instead of the merry men, it was the merry mammals?" Viv figured, it was the first words she had said since coming back down from the roof, she had been less talkative and more subdued despite Olivia's advice.

"M.M stood for Maid Marian, she was the leader of the gang." Kion corrected.

"Oh my god, I just remembered, there was a member of the Merry Men called Will Scarlet. You must be a version of him." Wasp pointed out but this did little to alleviate the freaked out expression on Robyn's face.

"A male version of Scarlet?" Hannah mumbled, subconsciously shivering at the thought, she couldn't imagine a version of her wife that wasn't a beautiful female.

"So that's why you were so spooked," Ms Marvel sighed at Robyn "sorry for dragging you there."

"You weren't to know." Robyn eased the polymorph's worries "This universe just keeps on throwing curve balls at us, first it's humans, then it's aliens and then magic...this just another thing to add to the pile of weird crap this dimension keeps churning out."

"So what do we do now?" Kion asked, wary of the DVD.

Alice picked it up and chirped "We watch it of course."

"You really want to go down that rabbit hole?" Spiderman asked before realising what he said and mouthing 'Sorry'.

"I knew Robin and Marian the least out of all the team but from all the stories you all have told me they clearly had a sense of humour." Alice said "So I bet they would get a kick out of this cartoon, let's watch for them."

Luna smiled down at her blooming bunny and replied "You're right, Nana and Granddad would think this whole thing is funny."

"Pizza, stew and a movie that'll mess up the mammals in the room." Robyn spoke glibly "Sounds like a fun evening."

"You do whatever, I'm going to keep investigating possible subway stations Andi and Ronin could be using." Arthur dismissed, wishing to focus on something less frivolous.

At that second, Hannah heard the elevator door open outside the apartment, she was about to say that the pizza had arrived but couldn't smell any such treat instead she heard some worried whispering between two familiar voices "Amadeus and Riri are back." she said out of the blue, Olivia noticed Viv tense up in an instant.

"In the hallway?" Spiderman guessed the striped hybrid could hear the new couple in the hallway "So the lovebirds are back, eh?"

Snowguard read the fretful look on Hannah's face and questioned "I'm guessing you don't like what they're saying?"

"They are worried about how their relationship will affect the team." Hannah answered, trying her best to ignore the stank smell that had just reached her nose "They're debating whether or not to tell you all."

"But we already know." Wasp pointed out.

Before the conversation escalated Viv cut in and maturely reasoned "Whatever their decision on disclosing the nature of their relationship we should respect it and support them."

Olivia looked up at Viv with a blend of sympathy and pride, she then backed up the AI's viewpoint "The lass is right, let's not bother them about it."

The front door opened and in walked the nervous figures of Brawn and Riri, the two looked surprised that everyone was gathered around the dining table as if in some sort of meeting "You guys ok?" Brawn asked.

"Sure, just freaking out over the multiverse again." Robyn glossed over.

"Right..." Riri dragged, arching an eyebrow before switching subjects "Listen, um, don't make a big deal out of this but, uh, well..."

Brawn saw his new girlfriend was floundering and decided to help out, he reached out and offered his big green hand to her to which she smiled and gladly took hold of, unknowing of the emotional pain it was causing Viv. "We've got something to tell you."

Riri and Brawn confirmed what everyone else already knew and after some well-wishing and congratulations from their friends they were clued in on the events that they had missed over the day including Crossbones' intel and subsequent death at the hands of Andi, the connection between the kidnapped mammals and the whole 'Robin Hood' thing. Team Ceartais and The Champions then gathered around the large TV in the living room to watch Robin Hood while Arthur, determined to keep his focus, was still looking into likely spots for the second rift.

To say that Team Ceartais' was disturbed by the animation was an understatement; first of all most of mammals weren't wearing pants, then there was the creepy factor that the voices of Robin, Little John and Maid Marian exactly matched their Zootopia counterparts, also the weirdness of sentient birds and reptiles was not lost on the group, Hannah let out a loud gasp when Robyn described the scene introducing a young rabbit named 'Skippy' the nickname of her father even though the bunny lacked stripes the blind hybrid knew this couldn't be a coincidence and finally the use of the phrase 'Oo-de-lally' the rallying cry of Team Ceartais triggered smiles from the mammals.

They were at the scene where Little John was singing 'The Phony King of England' when Olivia spoke up "Damn, Kodi would love this."

"Where is he anyway?" Alice asked while eating her fourth helping of veggie stew, wondering where the wolf had gotten to.

"He text me earlier, something about hanging out with Doctor Strange." Robyn answered, snuggled up in Hannah's embrace.

Snowguard smiled at this, glad to hear that the two were now getting along in spite of the frosty atmosphere the day before "Maybe Strange is teaching Kodi a few tricks."

"Great, that's all we need, Kodi using real magic." Kion commented, the burly lion was sat on a lone armchair "This day couldn't get any weirder."

"Hello!" A bright and happy voice said out of nowhere. Everyone turned to see a young koala in pyjamas holding a book in his paws, his sudden appearance made the heroes jump slightly and some let out yelps of surprise.

"Aaron!?" Robyn gasped, holding onto Hannah tightly.

"Hi Moms, I missed you." Aaron added, oblivious to the amazed stares he was getting.

Ms Marvel dropped the pizza slice she was about to eat and uttered "There's an adorable talking koala..."

"Aaron? What?" Hannah spoke with confusion, she could hear her adopted son's voice but couldn't sense his body.

"What the f- I mean heck is going on?" Luna corrected herself mid sentence while Arthur got up from the dining table to see what was happening.

"Is this little Aaron?" Alice cooed, her golden eyes lighting up.

"How is your son here?" Riri asked, resisting the urge to grab and hug the insanely fluffy marsupial.

"Aaron has psychic abilities including communicating with his mind." Robyn hastily explained.

"This is more like an astral projection thing." Spiderman reworded.

"This is insane." Arthur commented, shaking his head.

"This normal for us, believe me." Brawn added.

"Hold on this has happened before?" Hannah demanded to know "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well I was going to but then Deadpool attacked Alice and I kinda'...forgot." Robyn confessed awkwardly.

Luna then walked over and knelt in front of Aaron and introduced herself "Hi there I'm your aunt Luna and this your aunt Alice, we've been really looking forward to meeting you."

Aaron eyes then fixed on Alice's baby bump and squealed "Are my cousins in there?"

"They are indeed and I know they're going to love their big cousin." Alice smiled, she didn't know if it was her maternal instincts kicking in but she wanted to hug the little guy, she reached out to touch him but was surprised when her paw fell through his shoulder.

"Sorry, I'm not really here." Aaron apologised.

Hannah was happy to hear the little boy's voice but knew there must be a reason for his unnatural visit so she asked "Aaron, why are you here?"

Aaron then quickly explained how he had met up with Mufasa and Jasiri during the school trip to library, found a magic book and saved his classmates from TNTiger. Once Aaron had finished telling his story Kion gave a rare growl "Remind me to have a little 'Chat' with TNTiger next time we run into him.", the thought of his son being in danger terrified him but he couldn't deny his pride at his heroic actions.

"Our little hero." Robyn grinned, wishing she could scoop up Aaron and hug him.

"He must get it from his mothers." Wasp smiled.

"So you said something about a magic book?" Olivia refocused the conversation.

"Oh yeah." Aaron remembered, he gotten so wrapped up in his story he had forgotten why he came in the first place. He held up the tattered old tome and declared "It's called the Book of Seren."

Everyone in the room looked towards Arthur, who looked equally stunned and whispered "Seren?"

"You're Arthur, aren't you? The book said you were a blue wolf." Aaron said to the cop.

"The book told you my name?" Arthur asked dubiously.

"Uh-huh." Aaron nodded "It told me to tell you some stuff."

"I see..." Arthur replied in an unsure voice, he had been doing his best to ignore anything to do with Seren and now it was being shoved into muzzle.

"So that's the book Maria Hill was so scared of? Why is it in Zootopia?" Brawn asked, puzzled by this fact.

"I dunno'." Aaron shrugged "But the book says it can help you, it told me about the weird cloud thingies between worlds and how you can find them."

"There's a way of locating rifts?" Riri asked, sounding hopeful.

"Arthur can find em' but he needs his sword." Aaron corrected.

"I don't even own a sword." Artur reacted gruffly, folding his arm across your chest.

"Yeah you do, it's the one that came through the rift in the olden days." Aaron relayed what the book had told him, everyone was starting to look at Arthur with suspicion, wondering if he knew more about Seren than he was letting on.

"Well your book is wrong." Arthur stated, growing agitated.

"But the book said something about a village and a sword falling from the..." Aaron continued.

"I don't care what that damn book says! I'm sick to death of all this Seren nonsense!" Arthur suddenly snapped but he felt instant guilt when he saw the frightened look on Aaron's face.

Robyn swiftly stepped over to Arthur flashed her fangs and warned "Raise your voice to my boy again and I promise you you'll regret it."

"I'm sorry." Arthur apologised genuinely to the koala before turning around and walking to his room and away from his problems.

"Did I do a bad thing?" Aaron asked Hannah.

"No, you did a good thing, Arthur's just a little stressed at the moment." Hannah assured.

"I'll show that wolf something to stress about." Robyn simmered.

"Princess." Hannah cautioned before returning her attention to Aaron "We'll get Arthur to deal with this, we promise."

"Ok." Aaron said with a small smile.

"Now before you go laddie, can you give your grandma Judy a message from us?" Olivia asked, figuring she could task the little hero with delivering a simple status report.

000

The Cauldron was an easy place to hide around if you were a small enough mammal and even though Zoe was big for a bat she could easily fit in most crawl spaces without being seen, the only problem was that there was no water in air vents. Clara could only manage to sneak the bat a single water bottle and some rations once a day without being detected, in any other situation this would be fine but the vents were very warm causing her to get dehydrated really easily. So Zoe had taken up the habit of raiding the store rooms for food and water, only taking a small amount to avoid detection however on this afternoon she had gone a little later than usual and was discovered by a pair of Doombots. "Shit!" Zoe hissed as she swooped through the corridors of the Cauldron, avoiding energy blast after energy blast, she was trying to get some distance between her and the Doombots so they wouldn't see which vent she'd fly into and compromise it's safety, the heavy clunking of robots' feet were getting louder and closer by the second. Zoe flew by the isolation cells and saw a confused looking Esso staring at her with a worried look, she had no time to ease the lynx's worries and kept on flying as fast as she could. There was a mag lock door ahead and she let her instincts take over, she tapped into her new abilities and told the door to open just a little so she could zip through the gap, as soon as she was through she told the door to shut, blocking the Doombots' advance. Before they could unlock the door Zoe had already got into an air duct and was scurrying towards Kurt's room for daily update with Clara.

It didn't take Zoe long to reach Kurt's room, the blue mutant was still strapped to the table and Clara was busy herself at the workstation, the bat then spoke up from under the metal grating "I'm here."

"Good Afternoon, Zoe." Kurt said weakly, he had grown used to the flying fox visiting.

"Heard a ruckus a few decks below, your handywork?" Clara opened with, making sure to keep looking ahead to avoid suspicion on the security cams.

"You know it." Zoe grinned "Had to use my new 'Abilities' to escape."

"You're a technomancer." Clara clarified "Must be an affect from your contact with the purple cloud."

"Not going to lie, it's a pretty useful tool to have." Zoe admitted.

"Well you may have to use it again soon." Clara replied.

"Hm?" Zoe sounded.

"Clara has planned an escape." Kurt informed.

"Really?" Zoe asked, fixing her glasses.

"Doom doesn't know it but optimising Kurt's power and has given us the opportunity of escape, now Kurt has more energy he can create another rift for a small period." Clara began.

"But how are we supposed to get everyone through the rift?" Zoe asked, trying to figure out how it would work.

"We're not, we're only getting one person through; you." Clara answered.

"What? No! I can't leave while the other mammals are still prisoner." Zoe protested.

"Look we know that Team Ceartais are in the dimension Kurt is from, if we can get you there you can enlist their help." Clara reasoned.

"That's all well and good but how does this help everyone?" Zoe questioned.

"Because I'm not just sending you, I'm sending a device that is paired to the unique energy signature The Cauldron gives off, it will be an anchor point so you can find us again and mount a rescue. If you get the device to Olivia Dawson she'll be able to figure something out, it's our best bet." Clara explained.

"There are other allies in my world who can help, The X Men, The Avengers and The Champions. All of them have scientists as members who can help recreate a rift and lock onto this ship." Kurt convinced.

"...I don't like this, but we don't have a choice." Zoe griped "When will the anchor device be ready?"

"Two more days, at that point I'll get the other mammals to start a riot and distract the Doombots, then we can get you through the rift."

Zoe let out a frustrated sigh and begrudgingly agreed "Ok, but I'm coming back, I promise."

000

The SHIELD owned apartment building had about thirty apartments in it but there were a few that had been converted into offices for the agency, not long after 9am Luna and Alice were asked to come to one of the offices by Coulson who escorted them there. When the vixen and doe asked what it was about all Coulson replied that someone wanted to ask their opinion on Andi and Ronin.

They walked into the office and Coulson stopped outside a corner private office and said to the couple "Look if it was up to me, you two wouldn't be hassled over it."

"Phil, what's wrong?" Luna asked, seeing the concern in the agent's expression.

But before Phil could answer the door to the corner office opened and a stern looking Dragoness stood in the doorway, Alice was caught off guard by the appearance of the winged inhuman but Luna knew exactly who this was having read about her yesterday. "Come in." Dragoness instructed briskly, her reptilian-esque tail nearly swatting Luna in the face as she walked back into her office "Coulson, leave us."

Coulson looked down at the mammals and said "Good luck." before walking away.

Luna and Alice walked into the private office, noticing that small chairs had been provided for them "Ladies I am special agent Zoe Nightfall-Rojek but people around here call me..."

"Dragoness." Luna finished, detecting distain in the SHIELD agent's tone.

"So you've heard of me?" Dragoness asked back.

"Know you?" Alice said happily, sitting on one of the provided chairs "Well we know your mammal counterpart, Zoe is a close friend of ours."

"We're friends?" Dragoness asked, sounding unconvinced.

" _Oui,_ we go on double dates with you and Aleks all the time." Alice added, wondering why the inhuman sounded so cold.

Dragoness let out an annoyed snort "Well I'm not your Zoe, I'm the person Maria Hill has put in charge for hunting Ronin and Andi."

"And the reason you've called us into this meeting is because?" Luna cut to the chase, already sick of the woman's attitude.

"I need to consult with you on possible hideouts for our targets, you can think like those bitches unlike anyone else." Dragoness answered.

"But we already told Coulson everything and besides we don't know anything about Andi and Ronin." Alice replied.

"And do you really think if we had any idea where they might be we wouldn't go hunting them ourselves." Luna added.

"I don't know, would you? Seems like all you've done since coming here is stir up trouble." Dragoness threw back.

"You know for someone wanting our help you have a funny way of asking for it." Luna spat.

Dragoness ignored Luna and focused on Alice "I know Crossbones snitched to you. I want to know what he told you."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, SHIELD has a leak, we can't risk that information getting back to our doppelgangers." Alice said diplomatically.

"I've read your file, says here you used to be an assassin before turning hero." Dragoness changed the subject.

"Now you listen..." Luna began to react but a gentle touch on her arm from Alice's paw halted her.

"Yes I was." Alice confirmed "And we've already gone through the song and dance of whether or not I can be trusted so please refrain from repeating a tired talking point."

Dragoness seemed impressed by the comeback and said "I don't like the fact that a un-verified super team are working on this case, I don't think we can trust you, especially after that stunt you pulled breaking Arthur Knight out."

"Well The Champions and Avengers trust us and everyone knows if Arthur was a human Maria Hill would be in a cell for false imprisonment." Luna barbed.

Dragoness then looked at Luna and asked "Is she in there?"

"Is who in where?" Luna asked back.

"Andi." Dragoness said, delighting at the fury growing in Luna's amber eyes "You have dissociative identity disorder just like your human self, I just want to know if she's going to be making an appearance so I can get my gun ready."

Alice help Luna's paw and gave it a comforting squeeze before calmly saying to Dragoness "That was uncalled for. Luna has been open about her mental health with SHIELD, you know fully well that my wife has her D.I.D under control."

"Control?" Dragoness scoffed "If Luna has so much control then why is her hero name still 'Andraste'?"

"I had that title long before my mental health problems." Luna justified, fighting the urge to shout.

"Yet even after all the problems your other personality caused you still kept the name, sounds like Andi still has a leash on you fox." Dragoness parried.

"Luna is nothing like Andi, she's not dangerous." Alice defended.

"I know that this earth's Andi is evil, I know what she's capable of." Luna bolstered.

"Do you now? So you know that she is capable of three hundred murders? That she capable of tearing of one of my wings just for kicks? Or that she killed Aleks Rojek in cold blood?" Dragoness asked with a seething voice.

"Aleks...your Aleks..." Luna muttered, the news hitting her like scolding water.

Alice had heard enough and stood up saying maturely "I'm sorry for your loss Dragoness, but Luna didn't kill your husband. This whole meeting has just been an excuse to unload your wrath on an innocent party, please don't bother us again. Come on Luna."

Luna stood and was led out of the office by Alice while Dragoness called out "Think about what I said Luna, Andraste still has you under her thumb." Luna didn't reply but for the first time in years she was doubting her mental state.

000

There was a lot of coffee shops in Jersey City, not as their neighbour New York but numerous all the same and there was one near the train station that was frequented a lot by teenagers, mainly due to the free wifi, comfy sofas and the fact that you could reserve tables to play board games or pen and paper RPGs. It was also a great place to catch up on fanfiction in peace without a very noisy family interrupting you every five seconds and that's exactly what one off duty super heroine was doing. Kamala Khan was enjoying her morning off from hero work and was currently sipping her second hot chocolate while reading a superhero fanfiction about her heroic alter ego; Ms Marvel. The sixteen year old wasn't going to don her outfit and mask until late afternoon and only then she was just swinging by the SHIELD safehouse to see if anyone had been able to convince Arthur to open up about the whole Seren thing, the inhuman was determined to have a relaxed day after the madness of the last week and she couldn't think of anything more relaxing than reading fanfiction. She was sat at the window and could see the subway station entrance from where she was, in the moments where she looked up from her phone to drink her sweet beverage she couldn't help but people watch. There were families on trips out, office workers commuting to New York, a violin busker playing for cash but then something caught Kamala's eyes. It was piece of clothing, it was a dorky knitted hat black in colour but had a dragonballstitched into it, Kamala had watched the anime as a kid so her eyes were immediately drawn to it but then she saw who was wearing it and nearly dropped her mug. The woman was bi racial, half white, half east asian, a pair of golden eyes were framed by thick framed glasses and large purple hoodie hid the woman's athletic body. "Ronin." Kamala whispered as the woman hurried into the subway station carrying a plastic bag from KFC. The heroes had assumed the abandoned train station that Crossbones had talked about was in New York but they had never considered it to be in neighbouring Jersey City, Kamala downed her hot chocolate and quickly typed a message to The Champions "So much for my morning off." she grumbled.

000

The tempus dormitory's doors had been open for hours, Doctor Strange was satisfied with Kodi's training in intermediate magic, the wolf would never be sorcerer supreme but he was now a force to be reckoned with. Doctor Strange had urged Kodi not to go straight back to his friends, knowing from personal experience that the process of seeing loved ones after residing in the tempus dormitory could be traumatic. The former surgeon suggested that Kodi take a bath, eat some junk food, mentally prepare himself for seeing his friends again and choose a new outfit that would complement his new found abilities however after an hour Kodi trying on outfits Strange was beginning to regret his words. "Are you done yet?" Strange asked, he was sat in a comfy arm chair while Kodi was behind a curtain getting changed.

"Nearly, I think this might be the one." Kodi replied.

"You said that about the shroud of shadows, Houdini's waistcoat and the harlequin cape." Strange pointed out.

"But I really think this is it." Kodi then stepped out from behind the curtain still wearing his HUD domino mask but his black jacket and jeans were gone replaced with a black victorian era trench coat with a gold motif sewn into the collar, under it a simple waistcoat and trousers and to finish the outfit a blue scarf.

"The midnight coat, a wise choice. And that scarf is enchanted as well. You look ready Mr. Jones." Strange smiled with pride "Forgive me, I mean; Mage."

(AN/ So what did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on TBM The team tries to knock some sense into Arthur, Ms Marvel assembles both The Champions and The Avengers, Luna gets advice from unlikely source and Doom selects his first test subject. Please review and C YA SOON...)


	28. Talking is Hard

(AN/ Hey Folks here's the next chapter of The Broken Mirror. This is a very quick update cos there's still an ongoing family situation atm, so thank you for your lovely reviews, reblogs, likes, follows and fav'ing the fic. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 27- Talking is hard.**

Arthur had slept terribly, the Eurasian wolf had been restless throughout the night and in the brief moments of sleep he did have were plagued by thoughts of Seren. Aaron's sudden appearance last night had jolted all of the cop's attention to the very subject he had been trying his best to ignore since his rescue from Maria Hill's grasp.

Arthur wasn't sure how his powers and the book of Seren were linked, he had always been gifted with abilities but they had grown significantly since the purple cloud tore through Zootopia when he saw how other mammals had been suffering with their new powers he felt compelled to help them, he had always been like that, a soul who just wanted to help others. Arthur was laying on his side looking at his shield pendant hung around his neck, a Knight family heirloom, the only thing that remained from his childhood home. The wolf's mind was drifting into a pleasant memory when the door to his bedroom was abruptly kicked open and a pissed off Robyn came storming in "Up and at 'em, asshole!" she greeted rudely.

"Robyn?" Arthur nearly gasped, covering himself with his duvet seeing as he was only wearing boxers.

But the ginger hybrid didn't care for the wolf's blushes and reached under the duvet grabbed him by his right ankle and with one swift pull, yanked the canine out of bed "We need to have a little chat." She informed bluntly as she began dragging him into the living room with her enhanced strength.

"What the bloody hell are you doing!?" Arthur reacted, slightly winded from hitting the floor.

"Like I said, we're going to talk." Robyn answered in a thorny manner "And after you shouted at my boy last night I'm not in the mood for your personal shit."

"Stop pulling me and let me get some clothes on." Arthur protested, unable to break free of the heroine's strong grip.

"Nah, I think the cold morning air might do you some good." Robyn replied, pulling Arthur towards the open door of the balcony and in a flurry of movement standing him up and leaning him over the busy streets of Manhattan with Robyn stood on the balcony railing holding the blue wolf by the chain on his pendant and with her foot on his chest.

"Robyn!?" Arthur yelled in a panic, he wasn't looking down at the traffic but he could hear it, if Robyn let go he would be dead as soon as he hit the street.

"See I usually save this trick for interrogating criminals but since time is against us and the fact that you've pissed me off I'm willing to use it on your sorry ass." Robyn said coldly, keeping a tight grip of the flailing wolf.

"I'm on your side, I'm a ZPD officer for god's sake, pull me back inside!" Arthur snapped, feeling confused and scared.

"Are you on our side? Cos' all you've done since we rescued you is brood like a little bitch and ignore your problems. Well now your problem is all our problem, so start talking." Robyn snarled, baring her fangs.

"I've helped you, I found the link between the kidnapped mammals, I've been helping Viv find the second rift!" Arthur parried, baring his own fangs, even though Robyn was a lot smaller she was a lot stronger and he couldn't force her rabbit like foot off his torso.

"Whoopdie-doo, give the wolf a medal." Robyn replied with sarcasm "You and I both know you've been obsessing over files just to avoid the whole Seren thing."

"You know nothing about me!" Arthur argued, considering throwing a punch at the heroine, but thought better of it after remembering all the crooks that had crossed her back in Zootopia.

"I know that you're a chicken shit who isn't even brave enough to face their own problems." Robyn accused "When my Mom told me about you I figured you were a decent guy trying to do the right thing, sure you'll shelter other mammals when they're on the run from Doombots but when you have the option to help others with your powers you won't lift a finger."

"It's not like that!" Arthur denied, feeling the sting of guilt.

"You know what I just remembered my Mom wanted to give you a message that she was sorry for failing you and your friends, I wonder how'd she'd feel seeing you being a coward." Robyn wounded, trying to get under Arthur's skin "Now tell me; what is the connection between you and Seren!"

"I don't know!" Arthur shouted.

"Dude, I'm half fox I know when someone's trying to play me." Robyn threw back "Tell me the truth!"

"I don't know because I was never told about it!" Arthur yelled.

"Explain." Robyn prompted, pressing down harder with her foot.

"I was born like this! Born different. But before I could learn anything about it my family was taken from me...I was just a child when the fire happened, everyone I loved had turned to ash, all I have left of them is this pendant." Arthur answered, his voice strained as flickering memories of roaring flames and charred bodies passed through his mind.

"There's got to be more." Robyn pressured.

"All I know is the bedtime story my grandad used to tell me, about the guardian knights of Seren...but it was never a fairy tale to them, I've tried to block out so much of it because it hurts to remember them. I just remember a room in my house I wasn't allowed to go in, full of books...I can barely remember the faces of my family." Arthur confessed, he could still smell the smoke and singed fur from that horrible night "So you want to know why I've avoided Seren? Because it's the one thing that makes me relive that nightmare, I know somehow that Seren was linked to my family's death...i don't want to see anyone else die because of my family's secret."

"He's telling the truth Robbie." Luna sighed, Arthur could hear the vixen's voice but could not see her "Pull him back in."

Robyn tutted, lifted her foot off Arthur's chest and pulled the wolf safely back onto the balcony. Arthur caught his breath and saw Kion, Hannah, Alice and Luna looking at him from the living room "You were all in on this?" Arthur asked, caught between disbelief and anger.

"We were tired of waiting for you to open up to us." Luna justified, not looking in the least bit sorry.

"And this was a better option than me 'Questioning' you." Alice added while munching on a pear.

"What would've happened if she had dropped me!?" Arthur snapped, pointing at Robyn.

"Then I would've caught you." Spitfire said from behind him, the cop turning around and seeing the Spitfire mech hovering in front of the balcony "I was under the balcony the entire time."

"You're all crazy, you know that?" Arthur huffed, frustrated at the actions of the heroes.

"We're sorry Arthur, but we needed you to come clean with us." Kion apologised, the big cat was the only mammal who looked uncomfortable.

"I'm not sorry." Robyn chirped, walking back into the apartment.

"After what Aaron told us last night about a sword being able to track a rift we wanted to make sure you weren't hiding anything." Hannah said.

"Well I don't own the sword, it was just a bedtime story." Arthur griped.

"But a sword is mentioned in the story you were told?" Spitfire asked, landing on the balcony and opening up the chest plate so Olivia could exit.

"Yeah but the details are hazy, I haven't heard it since I was six." Arthur replied, walking back to his room so he could get dressed, closing the door so he could have some privacy.

"Well what do you remember about the story?" Alice pressed, speaking loudly so Arthur could hear through the door.

"Something about a storm of darkness that destroyed a village, a sword fell from the sky and the guardian knight used it to stop the storm before it could cause more damage." Arthur answered while getting changed into his clothes.

"How does a sword stop a storm?" Kion pondered.

"Aaron said that the sword can detect rifts, so what if the storm wasn't a storm at all? What if it was a dimension rift?" Olivia theorised, climbing out of the mech and onto the waiting paw of Luna.

"A storm of darkness sounds an awful lot like the purple cloud in Zootopia." Robyn agreed.

"But we know the purple cloud was caused by Doctor Doom, how did it happen in the middle ages?" Hannah asked, voicing her puzzlement.

The bedroom door opened and out stepped a fully dressed, and still vexed, Arthur who replied "I don't know and I don't care, the only thing I care about is finding the kidnapped mammals. Don't you think if I knew some way of finding the rift that I would use it, hmm?"

"I dunno'. You've played your cards close to your chest since we rescued you, I honestly don't know what goes on in the head of yours." Robyn shrugged.

Kion could see that response irritated Arthur even more so he attempted to soothe with "Arthur we just had to make sure you weren't hiding anything, you're a cop so you understand why with have to rule out all possibilities."

"Well now you know, so don't pull something like that again." Arthur groused before walking to the kitchen area to get some breakfast but before he even reached the fridge a ball of orange sparks formed in the centre of the living room "What now?" he groaned.

The ball of sparks formed into a ring which grew large enough for a figure to step through, out of the ring of fiery sparks walked a familiar face who gave a relieved smiled when he saw the Ceartais heroes "Hey guys."

"Kodi?" Robyn gawped, her navy eyes marvelling at the magic and her friend's new look.

Kodi didn't reply, he just walked over to Robyn and Hannah and wrapped then in a hug as the magic portal vanished.

"Kodi, is everything ok?" Hannah asked in a concerned voice, hugging the wolf back.

"I've missed you all." Kodi spoke, sounding choked up.

"Dude, you were only away for a night." Robyn pointed out, reciprocating the hug.

Kodi pulled back to reveal his crying brown eyes and sniffed "It's been a lot longer than that."

After the wolf had hugged everyone on the team and wiped away his tears, Kodi proceeded to explain his training with Doctor Strange and his stay at the tempus dormitory, it sounded unbelievable but the Zootopians had grown accustomed to unbelievable things since arriving in this universe. "So you're a year older now?" Hannah asked, fascinated by the tale.

"Yeah but it was worth it, this way I can defeat Doom and get Clara back." Kodi answered, his thoughts of the physicist had kept him focused during his year of training.

"Kodi you don't need powers to be a useful part of the team, you were already a skilled warrior." Alice assured.

"She's right." Kion agreed "Alice, Luna and Spitfire are all powerless and they kick all kinds of butt."

"I hear ya' big guy but Luna and Olivia are geniuses and Alice was trained in ninjutsu and swordplay since she was a child, I was just a guy who drove the truck and got lucky in fights." Kodiresponded.

"There's no luck about it, it was your natural talent that my grandparents saw in you." Luna encouraged.

"Oh my god, why are you all being such downers?" Robyn rhetorically asked her teammates "Kodi knows real magic, that's freaking cool!"

"I'll admit I'm a wee bit curious about your magic." Olivia spoke up from her position on Luna's shoulder "But what's with the outfit? The leather jacket was so much better."

"This isn't just about style, these clothes are enchanted." Kodi grinned mischeviously.

"Enchanted? Like your outfit is magic too?" Arthur asked, the smaller wolf had been silently making his breakfast whilst Kodi told his story.

Kodi answered by opening his coat to reveal the lining of it was black as night with white star-like dots peppering the darkness, but something about it didn't look right "Is that? No, it's not a flat surface." Alice gasped stepping over and went to touch the fabric but found her paw going into the void and feeling so cold that she snatched her hand back "Is that space!?"

"It is, this is called the midnight coat. When an enemy gets too close for comfort, I can command this coat to grab them and toss them to the other side of the galaxy." Kodi explained, loving the stunned faces of the mammals around them "Naturally I'd only use it on Doombots, if anything living went into space they'd be dead in an instant."

"Bloody hellfire." Olivia cursed, amazed by the garment.

"And that's not the only piece of clothing that's magic but for this trick I'll need a volunteer." Kodi smiled, his showmanship shining through "How about you, Robyn?"

"This won't hurt will it?" Robyn asked warily.

"No but it works best on mammals with short tempers." Kodi replied.

"Hey I'm not that bad." Robyn protested.

"You dangled me over a balcony less than fifteen minutes ago and refused to apologise for doing it." Arthur criticised.

"You shouted at my son so you're on my shit list." Robyn barbed.

Kodi waved his paw and the blue scarf from around his neck unwrapped itself and flew towards Robyn and swiftly knotted around her paws, binding her "Try and break free." Kodi grinned.

Robyn knew she had the strength to snap the fibres of a simple scarf so attempted to do so, but it didn't work, she tried again and failed, on the third time she began to growl but still no luck "What the hell is this?"

"It's a great thing to use on crooks trying to flee, tie their paws with this and the angrier they get trying to break out the tighter and tougher it gets. It'll only loosen with my command or when the captive is completely calm and free of anger." Kodi told.

"Yeah, that ain't gonna' happen." Robyn admitted.

"I know." Kodi accepted, waving his hand and having the scarf return to his neck.

"And I'm guessing Strange taught you a ton of spells?" Kion enquired.

"Too many to tell right now but flight and basic elemental magic are the highlights." Kodi answered while levitating a few feet off the floor to the amazement of his friends.

"But you're not getting rid of your wand or cards are you? I put a lot of work into those beauties." Olivia asked.

"No way am I getting rid of the wand, it's way too useful." Kodi answered "But as for the cards, let's just say I've made some adjustments."

"Well, well Kodi, looks like you really are a Mage now." Hannah smiled, proud of her best friend's accomplishment.

"Thanks." Kodi smiled in a goofy manner before asking "So what did I miss while I was away?" but as soon as he asked this question there was exchange of awkward looks between the other mammals causing Kodi to ask further "What?"

000

The Champions' mobile bunker was where the majority of the team were staying during this mission, bar Ms Marvel and Spiderman who had homes in Jersey city and Brooklyn respectively. Viv was always the first one up, despite actually needing sleep she simulated sleep between the hours of midnight and six am in order to reflect on the day's events and commit them to memory. Viv had been up for a few hours, she had eaten breakfast and was resuming her search for possible rift locations on the main computer in the cockpit of the mobile bunker, she would go to the SHIELD safehouse and help Arthur with this task later but felt it would be impolite to call on the mammals before 10am. The synthezoid had been so lost in her search that she failed to notice Riri enter the cockpit, the engineer was holding a glass of orange juice as she looked at the screen and asked "Any luck with the search?"

Viv was surprised by Riri's appearance but didn't show it, simply answering "Not yet, I'm resuming the joint effort with Officer Knight later, maybe we'll have better luck."

"So...I need to thank you." Riri struggled to find the right words, putting her glass down.

Viv got what Riri was hinting at and bluntly called out "You want to thank for me for my muted reaction over your relationship with Amadeus."

"Uh, yeah." Riri answered awkwardly "Given what's happened between us I just wanted to say thank you for being supportive."

"You and Amadeus are my friends, I don't want my feelings to jeopardise your romance." Viv said flatly.

"So you still have feelings for me?" Riri asked, feeling guilty.

Viv cursed internally for letting such a detail slip before confessing "I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel something for you. But that is my problem. I grew attracted to you despite knowing you weren't into girls, I kissed you without permission and let myself think we could be a couple."

"Viv...I'm sorry, but-" Riri began.

"Don't you dare apologise." Viv said firmly "You and Amadeus are a good match, you like and respect one another and have a bright future, don't apologise for something so good."

Riri saw the logic in Viv's words and replied "Ok. But I need to know; are we still friends? Because I want us to be friends."

Viv answered by standing up and hugging Riri "We're friends, that'll never change." she promised.

Riri hugged the synthezoid back and was about to say something heartfelt but the buzz of her smartphone made her groan "Are you kidding me?"

"It is a text message from Ms. Marvel." Viv was reading the same text in her head "She has sighted Ronin in Jersey city."

Riri read the text off her phone and smiled "Looks like we finally have a break in this case."

000

Avengers assemble. It was the well known catchphrase of the most prolificsuper team in this particular universe, when Ms Marvel was first invited to join the team she made it her goal to say the catchphrase at any given opportunity, fulfilling her childhood dream of being a superheroine. But her dream of being an Avenger was short lived, at only four months as a member, she left in protest at the policies and questionable decisions of the team and formed The Champions with the help of Spiderman and Nova. So it felt strange for her to assemble The Avengers once more after her bitter exit, sure she had teamed up with them since but it was the first time she had asked for help from them.

Luckily when she had called it was the friendly Tony Stark that answered, Ms Marvel explained the situation and the billionaire assured her that he would gather the majority of the team at Avengers tower within the hour. Ms Marvel then gathered The Champions and messaged Team Ceartais to make their way to the manhattan landmark. Arthur and Alice opted to stay behind due to their inability to battle while Ceartais used Kodi's new sling ring to create a portal to just outside the tower, the sudden appearance of the mammals made pedestrians gawk and take photos but they ignored the attention and walked into the building.

In the lobby they found Wasp waiting for the team, she got them access to the secure elevator and accompanied them to the top floor where the rest of the heroes were waiting. The lift doors opened and they were met with what looked like a very expensive bachelor pad complete with huge recliner sofas, pool tables, arcade cabinets and a bar. "Huh? Somehow I was expecting something a little more military." Kion observed, looking around and spotting The Champions and some of The Avengers.

"This building belongs to Tony, and he's just a big kid, he loves his toys." Wasp answered.

Robyn's eyes immediately spotted a trio of familiar faces from her bloody trip to the X Mansion; Laura, Collosus and Storm, whom was no longer dressed in her sensible teacher attire but in a black bodysuit with a flowing cape behind her "The X Men were called as well?" Robyn asked Wasp.

"Storm insisted. Ever since Beast was taken she's been in constant contact with The Avengers, Captain Marvel briefed Storm on the mission and she brought two of her best with her." Wasp explained, sounding glad that some seasoned heroes were joining them for this operation.

As Team Ceartais dispersed and mingled while waiting for the meeting to start, Robyn and Hannah went over to the X Men who were stood by an aquarium of tropical fish. The red furred hybrid wasn't the best at apologising but she felt she needed to address Laura about what had happened "H-hey Laura." Robyn greeted, hating herself for the slight stammer.

"Scarlet...hey." Laura replied, looking equally as uncomfortable.

"So, uh, I feel...well, um..." Robyn rambled.

"What my wife is trying to say is 'Sorry for fighting and tearing your throat out.'" Hannah spoke up and tapped her cane on the floor, knowing Robyn would dance around the apology for half an hour otherwise.

"Yeah, that. Sorry." Robyn added, thankful for Hannah's bluntness.

"I'm sorry too, when I woke up in the infirmary and Cyclops told me what happened I felt awful...thank god you can heal." Laura apologised.

"Right back at ya'." Robyn said with a small smile.

"Now that's sorted, introductions." Hannah moved the conversation along, she faced Collousus and could detect his massive and dense form along with a distinct metal scent. The blind gunslinger extended her paw and introduced herself "My name's Hannah, codename's Bullet, it's lovely to meet you."

"A pleasure." Colossus replied politely, shaking Hannah's paw with his massive metal hand "I am Colossus, head of the X Men's security."

"And I am Storm, team leader." Storm said stoically "I must thank you and your team for helping us in our hour of need. Doom has two members of our family and we need to bring them home."

On the far side of the large room The Champions were fawning over Kodi and his new look, and powerset but while Snowguard asked Kodi a barrage of questions Olivia noticed something; the only Avengers around were Captain Marvel, Captain America and Black Panther, plus Rocket Racoon was already downing shots at the bar. "Hey where are all The Avengers? I thought this was their pad." The brown mouse asked, she was sat in her mech with the chest cavity open.

"Most of them are at the compound upstate, they needed to leave a contingent to guard everyone on Doom's hitlist." Brawn answered "The two Caps and Black Panther are more than enough for this mission and Rocket won't miss the chance to get closer to Tazerface."

"And Iron Man is with Ms Marvel going over the plan in his office." Spiderman added.

At that moment the elevators doors opened and out stepped Agent Coulson but Luna's heart sank when she saw Dragoness standing beside him, triggering all the doubt and dark thoughts thathad surfaced from their last encounter. Luna wanted to keep her head in the game but all the things Dragoness had said got to her, the vixen dare not speak to the winged inhuman again and quickly made the excuse "I'm just going to head to the bathroom."

Luna scurried out of the main room sharpish and her lie seemed to have gone unnoticed, except for one person. The sympathetic soul went in search of Luna and found the costumed archer next to the helipad attached to the penthouse, she was sat on the floor with her back leant against a cargo crate "You ok?" Captain America asked, stepping forward.

Luna looked up, surprised to see the star spangled man especially after their frosty conversation at Parker Industries "Would you believe me if I said 'I'm fine'?" she asked back.

"Not really, no." Cap answered with a shake of his head "I'm guessing this has to do with Dragoness?"

Luna didn't answer directly but asked sadly "Why didn't you tell me Andi was the one who hurt her? Why didn't you tell me Andi killed her husband?"

"I couldn't break that news to you, guess I wasn't brave enough." Cap replied propping his shield against the wall, looking at the small predator hug her tail for comfort "I'm sorry for the way I talked to you, that I accused you of being another version of Andi, I can't imagine what you've gone through with this illness and it was insensitive of me to attack you like that." the old soldier said humbly.

Luna looked at the Manhattan skyline and mumbled "Maybe you were right with what you said."

Even though the archer spoke with a low volume Cap had heard her clearly "That's ridiculous." he said firmly.

"Is it though?" Luna replied "Because Dragoness seemed to make a hell of a lot of sense when I spoke to her."

"Zoe is still grieving, for her it's like the Singapore mission was yesterday." Cap reasoned.

"Singapore? You mentioned that when we were at Parker Industries. What happened?" Luna pleaded to know.

"You know what happened; Andi murdered Agent Rojek." Cap confirmed, sparing Luna the grizzly details.

"Dragoness thinks I'm not fully in control, that my D.I.D is still dangerous." Luna spoke.

"She's looking for someone to blame Luna, it was unfair of her to target you." Cap tried to ease.

"But what if she's right?" Luna barked, tears pooling in her amber eyes "Why do I still use the 'Andraste' codename? Why do I still wear the green colours that she wore?"

"Let me ask you this; who owned that title first, you or Andi?" Cap asked, hoping to get some sense into the vixen.

"...I did." Luna answered "But Andi was born from the anger and rage that came from me being 'Andraste'."

"The name isn't important, Luna. Your actions are what prove your morality." Cap encouraged.

"I've made some unforgivable mistakes, even before my mental health became an issue." Luna lamented.

Cap let out a sigh and picked up his SHIELD "I never chose the name 'Captain America', it was given to me by the government. It was originally a publicity stunt but it was my actions that made this uniform, this shield a symbol of justice and freedom to people. Now I don't know much about Zootopia but I'm sure that Andraste is a hero to many, not a villain. And I can bet that Dr. Luna Wilde is a hero to her patients as well, a loving wife to a fellow hero, a dedicated daughter, a caring sister and a friend who looks out for her friends. Those are the actions that make you a good person and that good nature reflects in your codename as well."

Luna finally cracked a smile despite her tears "...You must be the team dad."

"I guess." Cap shrugged, happy to see a smile albeit a sad one "Feel any better?"

"Not exactly." Luna answered honestly "You put some things in perspective but..."

"Dragoness' words still burn." Cap assumed, crouching down beside the vixen "Look you're not responsible for anything Andi has done in this dimension but if the codename bothers you so much, then ditch it."

"But you just said that my actions reflect my codename." Luna countered.

"I also said the name doesn't matter, most heroes change their persona for one reason or another but if the name 'Andraste' hurts you so much, then maybe find one that represents you better." Cap advised, putting his hand on Luna's shoulder.

"...Maybe." Luna uttered, wondering what it would be like to leave Andraste behind.

"Come on, let's go back inside. We've got a mission to prep for." Cap invited, prompting the vixen to stand up and follow him inside.

Twenty minutes later Iron Man and Ms Marvel entered the main room for the mission briefing, the tech billionaire pressed a button to flip the pac-man table and replace it with a holo-projector "Ladies and Gentleman, boys and girls, fuzzballs and critters; welcome to my humble home." Iron man opened, the hero was suited up but not wearing his helmet.

"Humble my ass." Captain Marvel sniggered, causing Rocket to nearly choke on his drink "Enough grandstanding Tony, get on with the plan."

"Yes Ma'am." Iron Man mock saluted the air force colonel "Long story short Doom's all starassassins have been hiding out in Jersey City, not New York like we originally thought. Ms. Marvel spotted a poorly disguised Ronin entering a subway station and after running facial recognition on the station's security cams it confirmed that was everyone's least favourite ninja." The projector was showing a map of the Jersey City subway system.

"Now we know that Doom's assassins had a second rift to Zootopia in an abandoned subway station as well as five hundred Doombots, thanks to the intelligence we got from Crossbones." Ms Marvel addressed the crowd of heroes "So we cross referenced all abandoned subway stations in Jersey City, which has a lot less than New York, there are only three possible stations."

"But I doubt that Doom's hench-jerks will let us just stroll in there, there will be security systems." Laura commented, the mutant was sat on a sofa arm.

"And we can't forget that all the abandoned stations are connected to working ones, hundreds of civilians will be at risk." Blank Panther addressed, observing the subway map.

"SHIELD can take of that." Coulson spoke up "We can trigger the fire alarm system and make up a story about a gas leak."

"But as soon as we do, the assassins will know the jig is up and counterattack." Dragoness mused.

"Bring em' on, I'll introduce those bozos to a world of pain." Rocket bragged, swigging on a scotch and ice.

"If they've got five hundred Doombots they're going to use them, this is going to be a bitch of a fight." Olivia voiced her concern.

"They'll send some of them to fight us." Luna said, realising something when she saw the subway map "The rest will flood through Jersey City."

"How do you figure that?" Snowguard asked, wondering what made Luna think this.

"How did the assassins get away last time? By planting bombs in Chinatown. If they feel cornered they won't hesitate to use the Doombots to attack the city, drawing us away from them and the rift." Luna answered, before pointing at a above ground rail yard "That rail yard is the largest exit for Doombots to go through, plus it's connected to all three abandoned stations."

"Is that what 'you' would do?" Dragoness asked in a catty manner, making Luna's ears fall flat against her skull.

Captain America then butted in "It's a logical assumption, we should go with Luna's reckoning."

"It does make sense." Captain Marvel agreed "We'll need flying heroes to take out the bots before they reach civilians. I think me and Tony can handle the north side of the railyard, Viv and Spitfire take the south, Dragoness and Storm cover the east and Ironheart...damn you're left solo."

"No she isn't, I'll guard the west with her." Mage volunteered.

"Since when can you fly, muttley?" Iron man asked dubiously.

Mage didn't get the reference but replied by hovering off the ground "Since this morning." he grinned.

"I hate to be the negative one but what if Luna's wrong?" Wasp said "What if the Doombots don't come through the rail yard?"

"Then we'll go through the tunnels and help out the rest of you, we're pretty quick." Riri assured.

"Ok so what's the plan for the others?" Spiderman asked, the teen was dangling upside down from a web for no apparent reason.

Ms Marvel cleared her throat and proposed "We split into three teams, matching powersets to make the teams balanced. We each take a station and if we find the rift we alert the other tunnel teams."

"A sound plan." Colossus complemented "But we are forgetting one thing; Night Howler. We know they have it and they could use it against us like they did at the mansion and with Crossbones' convoy."

"We've got you covered." Coulson said, reaching into his blazer pocket and producing what looked like an epi-pen "Thanks to the Night Howler antidote provided by Alice, we were able to find a flower with a near identical genetic makeup in this dimension, we've tested it against Zootopia night howler and it cures it."

"So if we get hit with Night Howler all we have to do is inject ourselves with the cure?" Storm asked, remembering the grizzly sight of blood in the school grounds.

"We've synthesized fifty antidote pens already, you'll each get one for this mission." Coulson promised.

"Let's hope we won't have to use them." Luna shuddered, the memories of a night howler infected Judy flashing though her mind.

000

Doom was sat on his throne, scrolling through a holo-tablet taking note of all his responsibilities, as well as The Cauldron's experiments the tyrant still had a country to run as well as defend Latvaria from foreign forces. Doom calculated that he stopped 95% of threats crossing through the border but he knew one day that 5% would cause grave harm to the Latvarian people, that's why this experiment was so important, to create a force that would protect the nation and the entire planet if need's be. Under his helmet Doom allowed himself a smile as he saw that one of the imprisoned mammals was now in peak physical condition, which meant that he was ready to have his powers extracted, the ID photo showed a caracal boy "Jason Candal, you shall be the first noble soul to help so many." He spoke, wondering if someone so young could survive the extraction procedure.

Doom was about to summon his bots to retrieve the boy when an alarm notification flashed up on his holo-tablet. The fire alarm and evacuation order had be enacted at a group stations in New Jersey, dangerously close to where the second rift was. "Hmm, disappointing but expected." Doom said, the dictator had predicted this would happen ever since Crossbones had been captured but he of course had a plan for this eventuality. He selected Ronin's contact information, confident that the assassin would do his will without question and hopefully eliminate some heroes along the way.

(AN/ So what did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review. Next time on The Broken Mirror; Captain America and Luna team up, things in The Cauldron become very loud and the team face their toughest challenge later. Please Review and c ya soon...)


	29. Tom, Dick & Harry

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. As always I'd like to thank all the lovely folks who liked, faved. followed, reblogged and reviewed the last update. So without further ado, let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 28- Tom, Dick and Harry.**

There wasn't a lot of places in Jersey city for a huge group of superheroes to hide, in the times of smartphones and social media the moment a hero was spotted it would spread through the internet like wildfire and tip off Doom's mercs. So for now the heroes going through the tunnels were hunkering down in the back room of a Pawn Shop that was a front for a SHIELD armoury while the team that would tackle the rail yard were in the back of UPS van that had been driven close to the yard waiting for the op to begin.

Scarlet was looking at herself in a mirror, inspecting the new suit that Riri had made for her, it looked exactly like her old one but apparently, she made it with a fabric that repairs itself "I don't see how this thing can fix itself." She voiced her doubts.

"Riri is one of the best engineers on the planet, if she says your uniform can repair tears, it can." Brawn assured.

"You sure you are not just saying that because you're dating her?" Spiderman asked, grinning under his mask.

"Don't be childish." Snowguard chastised, swatting Spidey on the arm.

Scarlet smiled at the exchange but when she looked back in the mirror it faded and was replaced with confusion, in the mirror wasn't her reflection or her human version for that matter, it was a hybrid mammal that looked a lot like her albeit with a few differences, in her shock she didn't get to study the female hybrid and when she blinked the mirror displayed Scarlet's reflection once more. Her confusion didn't go unnoticed by Kion "You ok, Squirt?"

"Yeah...no." Scarlet struggled to say "I think I saw something odd in the mirror."

"Like your human version again?" The lion asked further.

"No, it was a hybrid...but she wasn't me." Scarlet answered, puzzled.

"Your powers must be acting out again." Kion sympathised.

"Wait, I thought your powers were all nanotech, what's this about mirrors?" Wasp questioned, the scientist was naturally curious.

"When the purple cloud first came to Zootopia I got hit by it and I started seeing the human me in mirrors, Professor Bloom thought it was an extra power triggered by the cloud Doom released." Scarlet explained as best she could.

"Fascinating." Wasp beamed "Interdimensional observation, a minor power, not that useful, but still really cool."

"Sounds like you saw another version of you, believe me when I say the multiverse is big." Spiderman said, his own experience of the multiverse outweighed anyone else in The Champions "There's like an infinite number of you."

Scarlet looked troubled by this but lucky for her a friendly lion got her in a headlock and gave her a noogie "But in all the multiverse there's only one Undying Scarlet." He teased.

"Kion, quit it!" Scarlet half laughed, half whined.

In the adjacent room Agent Coulson was trying to stop Rocket and Bullet from raiding all of the seized weapons, both terrestrial and alien while in the 'Office' of the Pawn shop other heroes were talking strategy. Black Panther had set up a portable holo-projector and was discussing team setups "So it's decided, each of the three tunnel teams need a heavy hitter, a close combatant and a ranged fighter, anyone else would be a bonus."

"I can be the heavy hitter for my team." Colossus offered.

"And I can be a close combatant." Laura volunteered, the mutant holding up her right fist and extending her adamantium claws.

Ms Marvel who had a notebook and pen in her hand "Ok so the I've divided the teams up based on power and skill set plus personality compatibility so here's who I think should stick together." She began "So Team A would be Roar, Captain America, Andraste, Wasp and Black Panther. Team B will have Scarlet, Brawn, Rocket and me. Lastly Team C is made up of Colossus, Laura, Snowguard, Spiderman and Bullet. So two teams of five and one team of four."

"Pretty decent setup." Captain America nodded in approval.

Luna looked at Ms Marvel with wonder and asked "So did you just work that all out while we were talking?"

"Well, uh, yeah." Ms Marvel replied, quickly closing her notebook.

Laura smiled mischievously before snatching the notebook from Ms Marvel's hands and flipping through it "There's notes on all of us in here."

"Hey!" Ms Marvel barked, grabbing the book back.

"Why do you keep all those notes?" Luna asked, knowing that it wasn't just for strategy.

"I...uh..." Ms Marvel stalled, not wanting to tell the truth.

"She writes Fanfiction about superheroes." Black Panther smirked.

"How did you know!?" Ms Marvel blurted out.

"Captain Marvel told me." Black Panther smiled as the inhuman hid her face with her long black hair.

"Wow and I thought I was a nerd at 16." Luna chuckled.

"Ok, ok let's not embarrass her any further." Captain America calmed.

"If I may make suggestion for this mission, maybe we should give each team proper title then A,B and C?" Colossus suggested.

"Well since we're each going down a tunnel how about Tom, Dick and Harry?" Captain America offered.

"Like 'The Great Escape'? I like it." Laura agreed "Let's just hope there isn't Nazis as well as Doombots."

000

Less than half an hour later Coulson obtained the authorisation to shut down the three subway stations needed to access the tunnels to the abandoned ones, once the evacuation order was given and the steady stream of people began leaving the station on Sale street, Team B or Dick entered through the staff entrance where two local cops had opened the doors for them. "Coulson, Team Dick has entered Sale street station, moving to platform three and will move down the tunnel." Ms Marvel spoke through her comms.

" _Understood, Ms Marvel. Good Luck, Dick team."_ Coulson replied into everyone's ear pieces.

Rocket and Scarlet were both sniggering uncontrollably at the reply causing Brawn to query "What?"

"Dick team, hahahahaha!" Rocket snorted, getting out a heavy grade pulse rifle.

"Why not call us team penis, or schlong, or cock?" Scarlet asked, laughing along with the raccoon.

"Oh grow up." Brawn huffed "It's a reference to an old war movie."

"You guys are both older than us and you're acting like kids." Ms Marvel frowned, leading her team through the back offices and towards the train platforms.

"Well Team Dick is hard and ready for action." Rocket joked crassly, cocking his gun

"And we have consent to enter a very dark hole." Scarlet added earning an extra laugh from Rocket.

"Why did I put you two together again?" Ms Marvel groaned, unimpressed by the inuendo.

The group of heroes got onto the train platforms just as the last of the commuters were being led out by staff "Coulson got the train company to switch off the power on these tracks so we can walk on them without being electrocuted." Ms Marvel told.

"So this tunnel leads to Wilson Avenue station?" Brawn asked "Wonder why it was abandoned?"

"Apparently they started work on it a few weeks before the Wall Street crash back in 1929, anyway once the great depression set in no one had the funds to complete it." Ms Marvel recalled, having been given the information by Iron Man at Avengers tower. The four heroes jumped down onto the tracks and got out flashlights to light their path.

"Just under a mile in darkness, luckily I got great night vision." Scarlet smiled, leading the way. She could see well despite the darkness thanks to her vulpine genes.

After three minutes of walking in silence Rocket spoke up "So what are we looking for exactly?"

"Any technology that doesn't belong in a normal subway system and y'know, Doombots." Brawn shrugged.

"Crap, I can't reach the other teams. Comms must be patchy underground." Scarlet griped, looking at her modified smartphone and couldn't see her friends' signal blips on the map.

In that brief moment that Scarlet was distracted by her phone a figure dropped down from the ceiling of the tunnel, landed right in front of her before delivering a kick to her sternum that forced her against the wall and before she could react a large broadsword was plunged into her chest, impailing her to brick wall. "ARGH!" She hollered with pain as her navy eyes fell on her attacker; Taskmaster.

"Embiggen!" Ms Marvel yelled, throwing a giant fist at Taskmaster.

Taskmaster backflipped out of the path of the fist while tutting "Typical Ms. Marvel, always shouting before she attacks." the skull masked merc then threw a flashbang at the inhuman's face, dazing her before closing the distance and delivering a brace of gut punches before head butting Ms Marvel, making her fall with a groan.

Rocket tried to aim his rifle at Taskmaster but couldn't get a clear shot due to Brawn trying to land a punch on the villain "Brawn get out of the way, ya' big green Jackass!" Rocket berated.

"Rocket, help Ms Marvel and Scarlet!" Brawn shouted back, after failing to hit the swerving Taskmaster yet again.

"All you Hulks are the same, so smart and strong but never able to unify those gifts, all you do is telegraph punches." Taskmaster mocked, as he dodged Brawn's punches with ease.

Scarlet was still in pain but looked more annoyed by the sword she was impaled by "Seriously!?" She snapped "I got this uniform less than an hour ago and I've already got blood on it!" She then gripped the blade and yanked it out of herself and the wall, letting it clatter to floor. The hybrid's wound began to heal itself as well as her suit but she had no time to admire Riri's engineering skills, she unclipped the telescopic baton from her waist and extended it. Scarlet shot towards Taskmaster and swung the baton at his ankles, he got swept to the floor and Brawn finally landed a hit on the mercenary.

Brawn didn't allow Taskmaster to get to his feet, the green teen was holding him down as he bellowed "Where's the rift?!"

"T-That's not the question you should be asking." Taskmaster winced "You should be asking 'How am I going to survive this'? The masked man then pointed to something ten feet away.

A shaky Ms Marvel pointed her flashlight at object and let out a gasp "No." The object was clearly a bomb and it's timer was ticking down, it was currently at 4.34 and the seconds kept slipping away.

"Crap, crap, crap!" Rocket blasted, rushing over and inspecting the bomb that was about as large as him "It's a firebomb, it'll go up and turn all the tunnels for miles into an inferno."

"Correct, so I'd start disarming it if I was you." Taskmaster taunted.

"Turn it off, asshat!" Scarlet demanded.

"Afraid I can't do that, besides my entourage has just arrived to get me to my next engagement." Taskmaster replied.

"Entourage?" Brawn uttered, he then noticed dozens of sets of green electric eyes illuminating the tunnel, a swarm of Doombots flew at the heroes, two tackled Brawn off Taskmaster while another took hold of the merc and flew back towards the train platforms.

"Now what!?" Scarlet shouted, grabbing the nearest Doombot and tearing off it's arm.

"You guys need to cover me while I disarm this thing or we're all toast!" Rocket shouted back, firing a pulse shot at a Doombots head before kneeling next to the bomb.

"Can you disarm it in time?!" Ms Marvel yelled over the crashing of metal under her giant fists.

"Don't pressure me!" Rocket barked, noticing that most of the Doombots were flying away from the fight, it looked like Luna's theory was right; the bots were being used as a distraction.

000

Team Harry had entered Bendis road station at the exact same time as Team Dick. The five person team made up of Spiderman, Bullet, Snowguard, Laura and Colossus didn't have to venture through a tunnel only through a series of locked off staircases to go to the deep underground Kirby station, a secret station used in world war two to transport military intelligence officers. However every hero was unaware that they were being watched every step of the way via mini surveillance cameras placed there by Doom's team of elite assassins. Ronin was waiting for the heroes to walk into her trap, as soon as they opened the old steel doors to the war time station she would kill the lights and let her squad of Doombots distract the heroes while she snaked to them and sliced their throats. Ronin didn't need light to see her prey, her mutation allowed to see all gases invisible to human eyes, she would be able to see the oxygen and carbon dioxide in each heroes' bodies even in pitch black. Ronin had received the news of the heroes' arrival from Doom himself, but the tyrant had planned for this eventuality and the mercs were ready to enact Doom's will so his plan would kept secret and kept on schedule. Ronin would obey Doom's order without question, she saw this as just another step to the quiet life she craved for, the chance to have a family and for Andi to finally be at peace. The Japanese-French woman put away her tablet with the security feed stream just as Team Harry were coming down the final set of stairs, she swiftly climbed into the ceiling rafters and waited.

The locked steel door to the abandoned station was kicked open by the massive foot of Colossus who led the others into the 1940s designed station "Is it me or leaving the lights on in a station closed for nearly eighty years seem odd?" Spiderman called out, his spider sense tingling like crazy.

"Someone's here." Laura growled, extending her claws "I can smell em'."

Snowguard who transformed into her bizzare antlered wolf form sniffed the air and commented "I can smell Doombots, they have this weird scent to them."

"Doombots are the least of your worries, _Mademoiselle."_ Ronin said loudly, but before Team Harry could even look up she had pressed a button on her tablet shutting off the lights then quickly typed in a command for the Doombots to attack. The automatons had been hiding in the station's waiting room, they poured out and split up with a small portion attacking the heroes and the other flying down the tunnels. "You've all got a choice, stay and surely die or chase those Doombots before they lay Jersey City to waste." Ronin offered, dropping the down from rafters without making a sound.

"We already planned for that and it would be rude to leave so abruptly." Colousus grunted, it was dark but he managed to grab a Doombot and crush it's head.

"So be it." Ronin whispered, unsheathing her sword. Her golden eyes had already picked up the gases in the heroes, which appeared as blue clouds to her, she looked at the shortest form. It was Bullet who using some sort of alien shotgun with corrosive buckshot against the Doombots, Ronin ran over to her and swiped with her sword, if it connected Bullet would be beheaded, but the assassin had missed. Bullet had sensed the attack coming and had ducked, before diving through Ronin's legs. The white haired swordswoman had a mental stammer for a moment, shocked that she had missed but shook it off and went for Bullet again. This time Bullet jumped up, landed on Ronin's head and shot at two Doombots flying at her before twirling and launching off Ronin's head. Ronin let out a frustrated hiss and threw a trio of shuriken at Bullet which the gunslinger dodged with elegant and fluid movements like a dancer. "How?" Ronin whispered to herself, but Bullet had heard.

Bullet let out a giggle as she strapped the alien shotgun onto her back and produced twin bladed energy pistols that she had raided from the SHIELD armoury, she was ready for a close quarters fight "You thought darkness would help you, darkness helps no one." She smiled as she sidestepped Spiderman who was firing his web shooters at the Doombots attacking him

"What are you, mongrel?" Ronin asked, mad at herself for underestimating an opponent, she usually researched potential threats meticulously.

"Darkness is cruel, it's unforgiving, I should know. I was ripped away from the light and tossed into a world of inky darkness." Bullet monologued, stalling for time as her sense scanned the area looking for anything that could hint at a rift.

"You are blind." Ronin realised "Yet you can shoot, interesting."

"I can do more than shoot. The darkness took my sight, but I wouldn't let it beat me, I adapted, I learned to not fear it...You're afraid right now, your heartbeat just got a little faster and I can smell your sweat. You thought this would be easy." Bullet carried on, sensing the humming of multiple computers and machines in other rooms, maybe this was the location of the second rift to Zootopia.

Ronin took offence at this remark and charged at Bullet "You may not fear the dark but you will fear me!" she snapped, stabbing at Bullet who parried the katana with the bladed pistols, the striped hybrid tried to swipe at the assassin's thigh but Ronin blocked the blade with her scabbard before swatting at Bullet's head with it. Bullet tumbled back but fired two energy shots causing Ronin to roll away, the gunslinger got back to her feet and kept firing energy blasts at Ronin who was moving too quickly to be hit, soon enough Ronin had closed the distance and the two were exchanging blade blows again, Bullet was fast but Ronin was the better fighter, the gunslinger faltered and when Ronin saw the chance she kicked Bullet to the ground. She raised her katana to slice the mammal in two but her hands halted when something snagged on her blade, Ronin looked at her sword and saw webbing on it "Spiderman!" Ronin seethed, before she could look for the webhead his fist connected with her jaw sending her flying onto the tracks.

Spiderman helped Bullet to her feet and both were ready to take on Ronin, but the swordswoman had other ideas. Doom's will was already being done, killing the heroes would've been a bonus but it was not worth getting captured "Doombots, command Y-78!" She yelled, taking hold of her katana off the tracks. Suddenly a Doombot swooped down to her and grabbed Ronin before flying down the tunnel with great speed while Team Harry continued to fight the remaining machines.

"She didn't even say goodbye." Laura said smarmily, ripping through another Doombot with her adamantium claws.

"If she's heading to the railyard the others will grab her." Snowguard said loudly, she was back in her human form and hitting bots with her borealis blasts.

"Guys there's something in those offices, I can sense it, they could be hiding the rift there!" Bullet shouted, switching back to the corrosive shotgun and headshooting another Doombot.

"Let's take care of these pests first!" Colossus yelled, as he wrestled with two Doombots. This fight was far from over.

000

Coulson had expected Perez street station to be evacuated in the efficient and orderly fashion as Sale and Bendis subway stations but from the security cam feeds and the radio chatter the SHIELD agent he saw that the evacuation plan was not going smoothly. On the CCTV video he could see Roar, Wasp, Black Panther, Captain America and Andraste struggling to wade through the crowd of people to access the platforms that would lead to the discontinued Miller station.

"Sorry, excuse me, please let us by." Roar said politely, the giant lion was mesmerising the members of the public.

"Please leave this station calmly." Black Panther said sternly, trying his best to remain civil despite his irritation of citizens getting in his way and taking photos on his phone.

"I don't get it, SHIELD should've cleared these people out." Wasp said, the champion was in her shrunken form and flying above the crowd.

"Something's wrong." Luna voiced, unable to shake off a hunch. The vixen was finding it hard to navigate through the stream of humans, her height making it hard to see where she was going.

"I think you're right." Cap agreed "This just doens't feel righ-"

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The unmistakeable sound of gunshots sent the crowd into a panic causing them to stampede to the exit, Roar quickly scooped up Luna before she got trampled "It came from platform 2!" he shouted over the crowd. Team Harry raced through the sea of people and towards the stairs leading down to Platform 2, when they finally reached the platform they were met with the grizzly sight of two Jersey City police officers laying dead on the floor with their guns in their hands and arrow each through their right eye "No." Luna uttered, recognising the design of the arrows.

"Oh Mommy's girl." A teasing voice sang.

Team Harry looked to the open window in driver's cabin of a train to see Andi holding a knife to an elderly driver's throat "Come get me!" Andi grinned as the train pulled away from the platform and into a tunnel the opposite direction of the abandoned Miller station.

"It's a trap." Wasp pointed out.

"Of course it's a trap." Luna snarled, jumping from Roar's arms and firing a grapple arrow at the train, the arrow hit and she zipped towards it.

Captain America ran after the train while shouting "We'll handle Andi, you get to Miller station!" the old soldier leapt from the platform and grabbed onto the hand rail on the back of the train, he then smashed the door's window with his vibranium shield before crawling through much to the shock of the passengers on the train.

Luna had slunk through the makeshift entrance Cap had made and quickly made her way to the emergency brake handle, but when she pulled it she found it wasn't working "Andi must've disabled the emergency brakes." She figured, drawing a tranq arrow from her quiver before looking at the civilians and saying "We're going to get everyone to come into this carriage, please don't go towards the front, it's dangerous."

"She knew we were coming." Cap sighed, checking the train doors to see that the electric locks had been fried preventing escape "We can't underestimate her."

"I know." Luna said, a little fear leaking into her words. Last time she faced Andi she held the advantage of surprise, this time she had planned out the battle. The vixen's amber eyes caught the sight of a terrified mother holding her toddler close to her chest, she couldn't help but think of Alice upon seeing this "Mission priority just changed, we need to protect the people on this train."

"Agreed." Cap concurred, marching towards the next carriage "One of us needs to take care of Andi while the other stops the train."

Luna followed Cap while considering his plan, the vixen knew if she fought Andi right now it would be fuelled by anger and confusion resulting in her being slow and hesitant, one wrong move and she could get herself and others on this train killed "You take Andi, I'll get to the driver's cabin." Luna said pragmatically.

Cap couldn't help but smile at this causing Luna to ask "What?"

"You're putting others over your need to fight Andi, you're thinking like a good soldier." Cap said, opening the door to the next carriage and directing passengers to move to the back carriage.

"...Don't get mushy on me Steve." Luna smiled back, but deep down the archer was scared to fight Andi, in case her human counterpart triggered something within her. Luna was about to go into battle against Andi and herself.

000

"I still think this is a reckless plan." Vanessa griped, the curvy racoon was sat her usual table in The Cauldron's cafeteria surrounded by her usual group of friends; Regina, Harper, Jason and Clara.

"It's reckless but it'll get us a step closer to home." Harper voiced his opinion, the stag was munching on his breakfast veggie salad.

Clara didn't share her friends' anxiety over the plan, she had planned everything precisely, the anchor device was complete and ready to go and as soon as she signalled for the distraction she'd get Kurt to open another rift and get Zoe to Team Ceartais "Look just be ready to go at exactly 11am," Clara said, nodding at the clock hung up in the room "as soon as Esso kicks up a fuss in her cell I need everyone down here to start using their powers."

"Will Esso be ok?" Jason asked meekly, the caracal boy worried for his surrogate big sister.

"Esso's already in solitary, there's nothing more Doom can do to her." Clara eased the child's worries.

"But we could get thrown in there too." Regina fretted, the horse was too nervous to eat her breakfast of sweet grass.

"There's only three empty cells, Doom can't throw every single mammal in there. Although that's probably where I'm headed." Clara glossed over, knowing that Doom would likely punish her for instigating Zoe's escape "You did tell the plan to everyone, right Vanessa?"

"Of course I did. You worry about getting that soldier out, let me worry about corralling this bunch." Vanessa assured, despite not agreeing with all aspects of the scientist's plan the end result was beneficial to everyone.

The clock on the wall hit 9am and on schedule the hatch door opened, and two Doombots descended down. Clara stood up and walked over to them "Well if it isn't Laurel and Hardy, how are you this morning?" the she-wolf greeted sarcastically.

"Professor Bloom, please come with us for your shift in engineering." One Doombot said as always.

But Clara's fur stood on end when she saw the other Doombot pass her and take hold of the unawares Jason and inject something into his neck "Jason!" Regina gasped, standing up just as the feline lost consciousness.

"Stay seated." The Doombot instructed "This prisoner has been chosen by Lord Doom."

Clara quickly realised that the only reason Doom would take a mammal would to be extract their powers, a procedure that could result in death. The physicist ditched plan A and instantly came up with a plan B, she needed to get Jason through the rift as well as Zoe. Clara went to Regina and wrapped in her in what seemed like a usual hug while whispering "Jason's going through the rift too, I'll get Esso to start distraction ASAP, be ready."

"We will." Vanessa whispered back, sounding scared.

Clara was then grabbed by a Doombot and flew through the hatch, she was put back on solif ground and directed to march towards Kurt's room while her heart sank at Jason being carried away to god knows where. It was a full two minutes of walking until she was led past the solitary cells where an alert Esso was looking at Clara intently. "Now." Clara mouthed.

"Huh?" Esso shrugged theatrically, not understanding what Clara meant.

"Power. Now." Clara mouthed, her eyes displaying the urgency.

"Really?" Esso mouthed back, this wasn't the plan, it was too early.

Clara didn't have time for a discussion, she was nearly past the cells "Use your fucking power now!" she yelled.

"Quiet." The Doombot reacted, shoving Clara.

Esso knew things must have gone tits up if the plan was being sped up, but the lynx had nothing to lose. She took a step back and breathed in deeply, she had only used her powers once but it was that destructive she daren't use it again but this time it could actually help her friends. She threw her head back and let a cat cry erupt from her mouth, it wasn't just loud, it shook the entire ship, the hardened plastic of her cell was ripped open and the metal plating of the ceiling was torn apart. The Doombot escorting Clara shot towards Esso but the cat aimed another scream at the machine menace, reducing it to scrap metal. Alarms start blaring through every speaker possible, but they were a lot quieter than Esso's power "Damn Esso." Clara gawped, stunned by her friend's powers.

"Why did we start the plan early!?" Esso snapped.

"Doom has Jason, we need to get him through the rift before that bastard experiments on him." Clara hastily explained.

"Jason..." Esso gasped before snarling "Which way?"

"At the hatch a Doombot took him down a staircase." Clara answered.

"I'll get Jason, you get Kurt to create a rift!" Esso yelled, before sprinting off while Clara ran towards Kurt's room. Clara cursed her overconfidence, of course this escape plan was going wrong.

(DUN DUN DUN! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review and guess what? NO Spoliers for next week...)


	30. Love and Blood

(AN/Hey Folks, sorry not sorry for the late update. Things have been crazy with work and family lately. Thanks for your continued support, so without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 29- Love and blood.**

The remaining members of Team Tom didn't hesitate in continuing with their mission to find the disused Miller station, Black Panther was leading the charge through the old maintenance passageways with Wasp and Roar following closely behind. The Wakandan king's speed was hard to keep up with, Wasp was having to fly at top speed and it was only due to Roar's size that he could match the seasoned hero. Roar was panting so much he didn't have the breath to ask Black Panther to stop but the titan lion came to abrupt halt when Black Panther suddenly ceased his sprint, held up his fist and yelled "Stop!"

"Oh, thank god..." Roar wheezed, putting his paws on his knees.

"Panther, what's wrong?" Wasp asked, the miniature heroine landing on the Avenger's shoulder.

Black Panther crouched and pointed to what looked like thin air, Wasp and Roar focused their vision and looked to where he was pointing and were amazed to see what appeared to be a silver thread running from wall to wall causing Roar to guess "A tripwire?" but couldn't see any explosive connected to it.

"It's razor sharp vibranium, if you had run through it your feet would've come clean off." Black Panther answered, using his claws to tear the trap down.

"Actually, I would've been fine, impenetrable skin." Roar corrected.

"But Cap and Scarlet would be bleeding out." Wasp grimaced.

"They tried to kill my sister with vibranium bullets and now they use the metal of my homeland for a sick trap." Black Panther seethed, his then heard something around the corner and decided to lay some bait "Only a cowardly hunter would use traps and snares."

"All you Wakandans are the same," A voice bolstered from out of view, a second later Kraven The Hunter stepped out with a squad of Doombots behind him "so pompous and self-righteous even though you hunt as well."

"We only hunt what we need to and we give our prey a fighting chance, not using the tools of cowards." Black Panther simmered, the hero was counting how many Doombots there were but they just kept appearing.

"We can debate the finer details of hunting ethics later, King T'Challa. It shall be a just reward for when I defeat you." Kraven replied, gripping his spear.

"You're not going to be fighting Black Panther," Roar stepped forward "you'll be facing me."

Kraven supressed a laugh before sniggering "Ah yes the giant lion, I took you out within two seconds the last time we met, what makes you think you can beat me now? Especially seeing as we outnumber you vastly."

"Because you assume I'm like Brawn or She-Hulk, that all I have is strength." Roar answered, sounding serious. Black Panther took a step back, curious about what the red maned feline was going to do.

"Well it's certainly not intelligence, otherwise you would've attacked while I was talking to T'Challa." Kraven smirked.

"I may not be the smartest, but I am the loudest." Roar quickly replied before using all the air in his lungs to fuel the loudest roar he could muster, it burst from his mouth and hit Kraven like a hurricane, throwing him into his Doombots that were struggling to stay on their feet. Roar kept his shout going as he rushed towards Kraven and scooped him up, it's only when he began to bear hug the villain that he ended his bellow. "If I punched you I could kill you but draining you of oxygen slowly will only put you to sleep."

"Unhand me!" Kraven snapped, trying to struggle out of Roar's bulging arms while Wasp and Black Panther fought off the Doombots trying to free the merc.

"Believe me, I want to let go and beat the living daylights out of you." Roar replied with distain, staring at the notable furs of cheetahs, zebras and other mammals Kraven had clothed himself in "You hunt innocent mammals for sport and fur even though humans are mammals! Where I'm from all mammals are equal!"

"I'll chop off your head and mount it on my wall!" Kraven shouted over the sound of smashing Doombots, the hunter unsheathing one of the knives from his belt and attempted to stab Roar in the side, only for the blade to shatter.

"Nothing can pierce my skin." Roar informed, squeezing Kraven a little harder.

"You c-cursed cat..." Kraven stammered, growing weaker.

"Nighty night." Roar smiled with satisfaction as Kraven's body went limp in his arms.

"Nice strategy, Kion." Wasp grinned, using her shrink disks to make the Doombots smaller so that Black Panther could shred them easily with his claws.

Roar set Kraven down and quickly got out cable ties from his pockets, binding the hunter's hands and feet, he then kept one of his huge foot paws on Kraven so a stray Doombot couldn't snatch him "Let's finish these guys off." Roar said, raising his fists, ready to take care of the remaining Doombots.

"Several have already got by us!" Blank Panther admitted, kicking a Doombot down before slashing at its face "I hope the team at the rail yard can handle it."

000

"They just keep coming!" Captain Marvel yelled, flying around and firing photon blasts at every Doombot she could see, the mechanised menaces were pouring out of the large six track tunnels with some taking to the air and other trying to escape on foot.

"And that's twelve!" Iron Man cheered as one of his micro missiles destroyed a Doombot trying to smash through a fence into the city.

"Are you seriously counting your kills right now?!" Captain Marvel shouted, frustrated with her teammate.

"Oh, come on Danvers, don't be mad just because you're losing." Iron Man responded, smiling under his helmet.

"Do you want me to put you in a coma again?" Captain Marvel smirked, jokingly aiming her glowing hand at Iron Man before firing it at Doombot beside him.

Over on the southern side of the rail yard Spitfire was getting some much-needed revenge on the Doombots that wrecked her old mech back in Zootopia, her modifications to this new mech countered the vibration energy blasts that the Doombots fired off by the armour tuning into the same frequency. Spitfire didn't want to fight from a distance with projectiles, she was getting up close and personal with the tin cans and tearing them apart "Not so tough now, are ya? Ya' wee bastards!" Spitfire laughed manically, grabbing a piece of steel track off a pallet and using it to club Doombots.

"Spitfire, you seem to be enjoying this battle." Viv observed, using the heat blast from the gemstone on her forehead to melt any Doombot near her.

"Aren't you?" Spitfire half laughed, dropping the track and tackling another Doombot to the ground before pummelling it.

"I receive no joy from violence." Viv answered plainly while wrestling with a Doombot in mid-air "I am taking part in this mission to help others."

"Then by beating the bolts out of these bots helps everyone, that's got at least make you happy?" Spitfire framed a different angled while throwing the pummelled Doombot into one of its flying brethren.

"I suppose you're right." Viv answered with the hint of a smile before slamming the Doombot into the side of train carriage.

To the east of the rail yard Dragoness was soaring high, garbed in her bespoke SHIELD combat gear that accommodated her wings and tail, she was armed with a seized kree energy rifle and her aim was set on the tunnel. Storm fired a lightning blast at a Doombot that was flanking Dragoness, this was the third time since the fight began the mutant had to save the inhuman "Be mindful of your surroundings Agent!" Storm implored.

"You watch my back, I'm taking them out as they step out of the tunnels." Dragoness grunted, firing off more shots "I'm not missing my chance to take out Andi or Ronin!"

Storm had summoned a small tornado to take care of a swarm of bots trying to charge the exit gate of the yard, the seasoned heroine looked at the inhuman with sympathy, Dragoness was here for vengeance not justice.

In the west part of the rail yard Iron Heart had taken out her fair share of Doombots but all she could mumble was "Holy crap." when she saw what Mage was doing. In the brief time since the battle began she had seen the wolf multiply himself to confuse his foes, seen black tentacles sprout from his coat to snatch up Doombots and take them into a void and now the magical hero had made daggers of diamonds appear out of thin air and was using them to tear through Doombots

"Is that all you've got?" Mage chortled, zipping through the air.

"Damn Kodi, you were a kick ass before but this is next level." Iron Heart complimented.

"I know right?" Mage replied with giddiness, even though he had trained for a year this was this first time he had really tested his skills in combat.

Iron Heart was about to make a jibe at the canine's dorky behaviour when she spotted a heat signature around a group of Doombots, it was human shaped "Head's up, we've got a merc running at three o'clock!" she told, zooming over and firing repulser beams at the Doombots, two fell to reveal Taskmaster being carried by another robot.

"You again? Ready for round two?" Mage grinned, landing on the ground.

Taskmaster freed himself from the Doombot carrying him and replied "Mage, wasn't it? You got the best of me last time, I've studied you tricks and moves. You won't beat me this time."

"Yeah, I've got to admit I was lucky last time, but I bet you haven't seen this trick." Mage smirked, in a flash Mage fired one of his trick cards at the assassin, Taskmaster had already drawn a dagger ready to slice the card while it is flying but before it got close enough for him to cut the card glowed gold and a giant demonic like hand bust from the card and took hold of Taskmaster before dragging him into the paper.

Ironheart took care of the other Doombots surrounding them and asked in a shocked tone "What did you do to him!?"

Mage went over and picked up the card, it was a tarot card for judgement, with the image of Taskmaster holding the titular scales "He'll be fine, just think of this as a portable jail cell." Mage assured, tucking the card away.

Suddenly Mage's comms crackled with Bullet's voice " **Mage, status report."**

"Just captured Taskmaster, Doombot heard is being thinned, it's only stragglers left now." Mage informed "How's things on your end?"

" **We think we've found something but we need someone tech savvy to take a look, can you do your portal thingy to get Spitfire, Viv or Iron Heart here?"** Bullet requested.

"On it, I'll get us there ASAP." Mage replied, his sling ring could channel where he wanted to go, he didn't need to know the location all he had to do was focus on a specific soul, he'd be able to lock onto Bullet with ease.

"Take Viv, she's got better scanners than me." Iron Heart suggested "Me and Spitfire will pick up the slack."

000

Luna and Captain America cautiously made their way through the eight carriages of the subway train, directing passengers to the back of the train as they went. "She'll be able to pick us off as soon as we enter the front carriage, these doorways are narrow." Luna observed, keeping an eye out for any explosives or traps as they walked forward.

"Stay behind me and my shield, it'll protect us long enough so I can charge at her and you can get to the driver's cabin." Cap replied, his shield was already raised.

"It won't be that easy." Luna stated.

"It never is." Cap responded, but the soldier stopped in his tracks when he saw the glass pane on the door to next carriage was stained with blood "No..."

"Easy, she wants us to rush in there like idiots." Luna warned.

"But someone's hurt." Cap protested.

"And more will get hurt if we go in there wildly." Luna reasoned.

"...You're right." Cap accepted, he took a breath and continued forward "Let's do this." he reached for the handle and opened the door, raising his shield for an expected arrow to strike but it never came.

Luna was behind Cap but her amber eyes fell on a man in his twenties laying on the floor clutching his hands to a stab wound on his stomach, trying to stop the bleeding "Why don't you help him?" A voice crooned.

Captain America had his vision locked on Andi who was at the other end of the carriage aiming her bow at a terrified man on his knees, while other passengers were glued to their seats with fear "First the bombs in Chinatown and now this, since when was hurting unarmed people a challenge for the great Andi?" Cap bristled, stepping forward past the bleeding man and crouching down so he could shield both Luna and the man as the vixen tended to the man's wound.

"You're right it's beneath me but orders are orders, I was told to distract and this was the first thing that came to mind." Andi shrugged "And Mommy's girl showing up is just a sweet little bonus."

"Go screw yourself, Andi!" Luna barked, the vixen was using her small first aid kit to pack the wound and put a pressure dressing on it, the man needed to get to a hospital so it could be closed.

"Why are you doing this Andi? You and Ronin aren't the type to be lapdogs, yet you seem to be dancing to Doom's tune." Cap kept the conversation going, trying to figure out a way that he could knock Andi out without any passengers getting killed.

"Because Ronin wants it, and when my love wants something she gets it." Andi replied, fully aware that Cap was stalling but she was going to use this chat to psyche her opponents out.

"I'm surprised a monster like you knows what love is." Cap stalled further

"Oh, Captain Rogers, of course I know what love is." Andi mockingly sighed "Love is very powerful, it can make us do crazy things. Take that guy bleeding out behind you, I took his boyfriend as a hostage and suddenly he's compelled to attack me to save his beau, that is love. Love is the ultimate corruption, hence why I'm the dominant personality in this body."

Luna tensed for a second before snarling "Don't you dare try and justify who you are with love."

"I was driven to kill by the love I felt for my best friend, my version of Olivia was murdered, the loss of that love made me appear and put me in control." Andi replied, knowing that she was getting to Luna.

Captain America then sprang into action while Andi was distracted with Luna, he threw his shield at Andi's bow knocking it out of her hand before leaping at her, Andi reacted by kicking her hostage in the direction of Cap, who caught him while Andi scrambled for her bow and strap it to her back. Luna took her cue and tried to race by Andi into the driver's cabin but was stopped by a kick to the gut from her human counterpart. Once Cap had set the hostage down he rushed at Andi but the archer saw him coming and drew her twin daggers and slashed at him making the old soldier weave and dodge. "Cap!" Luna hollered, throwing the hero his signature shield over Andi's head, he caught it and immediately began to deflect Andi's dagger strikes.

Even though she was winded from Andi's kick she opened up the door to the driver's cabin to see that driver had been knocked out, slumped over the controls, the vixen pulled the unconscious driver off them and found the big red handle for the emergency stop "Everyone hold onto something!" Luna shouted to the passengers and Captain America. She pulled the red lever and train came to a screeching and stuttering stop causing a wave of cries as people tumbled, Captain America had instinctively taken hold of a falling pensioner and put them back in their seat.

Andi took advantage of Cap's distraction, drew her bow and aimed an arrow at a family on the opposite side of the carriage "Let's spice things up, shall we?" she grinned maliciously as she fired the arrow.

"No!" Captain America yelled, jumping in front of the arrow and raising his shield. The arrow hit the shield's edge but there was no metallic pinging noise, there was only a splat as the arrow head exploded with blue liquid, splattering over the shield and hitting the skin of Cap's chin.

"Night howler!" Luna gasped, coming out of the cabin "Cap use the antidote!"

Captain America had already dropped his shield, his body was trembling, his shaky hands reaching into the pouch on his belt, he retrieved the antidote epi-pen but before he could inject it was snatched out of his hand by Andi "This should be fun." The villainess said, rushing into the other carriage to get away from the infected hero.

"Everybody get away from him!" Luna shouted, drawing a tazer arrow "Sorry about this, Cap." she let the arrow fly and it struck Cap directly in the chest, his body jolted for a moment but he didn't fall unconscious instead he just at Luna with pure rage "Fuck." Luna uttered, pulling a sleeper arrow out of her quiver hoping that would subdue him.

Before Luna could fire though Captain America sped toward the vixen and tackled her while screaming like an enraged beast, Luna felt her ribs crack she was pinned up on the wall, dropping her bow. Luna fought back her fear and her paws began feeling around her kit belt for her night howler epi-pen, she gripped hold of it but when she was slammed against the wall again she dropped it with a yell of pain, her ribs now broken and her one chance to cure Captain America of his wrath was gone, the screams of the panicked passengers was the perfect soundtrack to her predicament "S-Steve..." Luna breathed, her ribs in agony and desperately trying to figure a way out.

Then out of nowhere Luna felt a spray of warm liquid on her face, Captain America had stopped with the pressure and screaming, the vixen looked to the Avenger's throat and could see an arrowhead pierced through it. Cap dropped Luna and fell to his knees, gargling while raging as his airway filled up with blood "No, no, no!" The blood splattered Luna shouted.

"That was a lot easier than expected." Andi spoke, now back in the carriage with her bow in hand.

Cap fell to his side, convulsing and shaking, Luna ran over and tried to put pressure on the weakened soldier's wound "Steve it's going to be ok, we're going to get you help!" She babbled, tears forming in her amber eyes.

"No, he's not and you know it." Andi spoke, her voice growing more icy "And what's more you could've stopped this."

With a spare paw Luna picked up her epi-pen that had fell to the floor and injected into his leg so that Cap would stop trying to thrash around "Steve stay with me." she willed through tears.

Captain America was trying to say something but it just came out as a bloody gargle sound. Andi looked down at the scene and commented "You could've got your dagger and stabbed him in the arm, he'd drop you then you could've got the antidote back but you didn't. See that's the big difference between you and I, I can react to what I need to do while you still hesitate Mommy's girl. It's your fault he's dying."

The words hit Luna harder that it should've but in a twisted way Andi was right. The assassin then stepped to the subway train's door pressed her smartphone to the door panel and it opened, the redhead escaping into the darkness of the tunnel as the passengers gathered around to watch Luna vainly try to stop the bleeding. When Steve stopped breathing Luna let out a sad vulpine cry, she removed her bloody paws and cried into the star on the old soldier's uniform. Captain America had fallen.

000

Esso had no idea where she was running to, the lynx had raced down the staircase near the hatch and was racing down corridors hoping to find any hint of where the Doombots had taken Jason but had so far found nothing "Every freaking hallway looks the same!" she stressed.

"Hey!" A voice shouted, Esso looked to the other end of the corridor to see a flying fox in military garb flying towards her.

"Zoe, they've got Jason." Esso told the bat with haste.

"I know, the medical lab is this way." Zoe replied, making a sharp left down a corridor causing Esso to chase after her "Clara filled me in, she's getting Kurt to open a portal while we get the kid." The technomancer lead Esso down the run-down prison ship's corridor before using her new gifts to open a locked door in front of them.

The door opened and they were met with a scene pulled straight of a bad sci- fi movie; an awake and afraid Jason was strapped to a table while a strange looking robot with eight arms all holding surgical tools hovered over him while two Doombots stood guard. Zoe tapped into her powers and got the surgical bot to stab itself with its instruments while Esso aimed a sonic shriek at one of the Doombots, tearing it to pieces. Zoe then dodged a green energy blast from the other Doombot before Esso could destroy it with another shout. Esso caught her breath and rushed over to Jason, the young caracal's fur was razor sharp metal but it began to fade back to its normal appearance when he saw his rescuers "Esso!" he beamed.

"Hey kid." Esso was trying to act cool, but the relieved look on her face coupled with her tears betrayed her.

Zoe use her technomancer skills to release the magnetic shackles that were holding Jason down, the young cat shooting up and hugging Esso "You rescued me!" the boy was nearly crying.

"This nice bat helped you too, her name's Zoe and you're going to need to follow her, you hear me?" Esso ordered, hugging the child back.

"W-what?" Jason reacted, pulling back and looking up at Esso with confusion.

"I need you to go with Zoe, she's going to take you to Clara and you're getting off The Cauldron." Esso told.

"What about you!?" Jason asked anxiously.

"Someone's got to take care of the bad guys, I'm going to make so much noise that they'll have to come chase me." Esso grinned cockily, but inside she was crapping herself "Go with Zoe, she'll get you out of here."

"Come on Jason, you're going have to run and keep your powers active." Zoe encouraged, guiding the scared boy out of the room.

As soon as the two were gone, Esso wiped the lingering tears away before beginning to scream again, making sure to aim her cries at the medical equipment so Doom couldn't experiment on anyone, anytime soon. The lynx was enjoying herself and after two minutes of near constant sonic shrieks she had completely wrecked the lab but that satisfaction was short lived as she saw a looming figure in the doorway, she had never seen Doom before but from Clara's descriptions she knew it was him, she tried to let out a shout at him but he shot forward with incredible speed and landed a deliberately underpowered jab at the feline's face, knocking her out and breaking her nose.

Three decks above Clara was furiously typing at a workstation "Ok I can reopen the last rift that was closed, it says here's it's an alternative New York." She said with speed, typing in the command "We've got sixty-eight seconds till we open it, I've set so as soon as twenty seconds passes it closes."

"This will work Clara, be calm." Nightcrawler soothed, despite being chained up.

Suddenly the door to Kurt's room opened and Zoe and Jason camer rushing in but as soon as Jason saw the demonic looking mutant he yelped in terror "Monster!"

"Jason he's a friend, his name is Kurt." Zoe soothed the terrified boy.

" _Guten tag,_ Jason." Kurt replied, he wasn't hurt by the child's reaction, he was used to it.

"Ok, the rift is going to open in about a minute, soon as it opens, both of you jump in and you'll be in New York." Clara instructed getting out of her seat and putting a lanyard around Jason's neck, but instead of an ID card attached it looked like some sort of circuit board.

"What's this?" Jason asked, the boy's metallic fur clinking against the object.

"It's an anchor device, we're going to use it to rescue everyone else here, get it to Team Ceartais they'll know what to do." Clara instructed "If you and Zoe get separated tell them the password, hummingbird they'll know she's alive then."

"Team Ceartais!?" Jason gasped at the mention of the heroes.

"BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" A bellow came from somewhere in the ship making everyone flinch, the voice belonged to Doctor Doom.

"Doom..." Clara spoke, her mouth going dry.

"Looks like he's figured out what's going on, I can hear the machines talking, you've got a dozen bots and buckethead himself heading here." Zoe said, wishing she had a weapon.

Clara looked at the timer on the monitor, there was still thirty seconds until the rift opened "Then we'll have to fight him off until you two get out of here."

"What can we do?" Kurt asked, weakly.

Clara answered by closing her eyes and focusing on her powers, Doom believed her to have a passive power not an active one, truth is she possessed both and it was time to unleash it. Her eyes opened and glowed green, a static electricity filled the air as her body started to become transparent and emanate a purple light, her hands then began to pulse with brighter with purple "He'll see what I can do." She spoke, her voice crackling with electricity.

"Whoa..." Jason gawked.

"Damn Professor." Zoe mumbled, but then her powers caught the presence of the Doombots outside "Here they come!"

The door burst open just as the rift opened, Clara just had enough time to fire a fork of purple coloured lightning at a Doombot before a stun grenade was thrown into the room, Zoe reacted fast and got another Doombot to jump on top of it, reducing the blast. Then Doom himself stomped in and went straight for Clara who was firing beams at him, making the tyrant stagger back. "Jason through the rift!" Kurt shouted, the cat complied and leapt through.

Zoe tried to fly to the rift but her way was blocked by Doom and Clara fighting and the Doombots trying to kill her, time was running out and the rift would be gone, in a heartbeat she made a rash decision. Zoe used her powers to take control of a Doombot, she then commanded it to flank the she-wolf and fire a vibro-blast at her side, sending her hurtling into the rift. Before Clara knew what was happening there was a flash of light, she felt weightless for a second and then found herself falling into someone's arms.

As her body returned to its usual state and her eyes faded back to brown, she looked up in a daze at who caught her and couldn't believe who she was looking at, a handsome wolf with black and white fur wearing a domino mask "Kodi?" she whispered.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Clara escaped! Cap is dead! What did you folks think? please please please review! Next time on TBM; Clara and Jason try and adjust to humans, Rocket lands himself in hot water, the world mourns a fallen hero and Luna makes a choice. Please review and c ya soon...)


	31. No More

(AN/Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with chapter 30 of The Broken Mirror. I know this over a week late but I've had to care for family members with cancer lately. Thank you for your lovely messages of support and all the hugs from the TAS dev team. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 30- No More**

"What the hell is that?" Mage asked, scrunching up his face. The Wolf and Viv Vision had just walked through a sling-ring portal into the wartime era Wilson station. In the offices of this station, Team Harry's Collosus, Laura, Spiderman, Snowguard and Bullet were stood around a few modern workstations that encircled what looked like a huge metal bowl with a multitude of cables running from it and plugged into highly advanced generators.

"We were hoping you could tell us." Snowguard replied, the mystic was sat on a nearby swivel chair.

"I'll run a diagnostic and try to identify what this machine actually is." Viv informed, the synthezoid held out her hand and began to scan the device "Have you found anything else?"

"I have been looking through the files but they seem to be written in a code." Collosus said, the metal mutant was flicking through some papers.

"I should've got to Ronin, we could've forced her to give us the ciphers." Laura tutted, wiping Doombot oil off her claws.

"Wait, Ronin was here?" Mage asked, sounding concerned.

"Yeah but Bullet totally kicked her butt." Spiderman answered, fist bumping the gunslinger.

"But you were the one who saved my tail." Bullet praised before sighing "But she got away. At least you caught Taskmaster."

"You caught that douchebag!?" A pissed off voice asked. Everyone looked to the doorway of the office to see the four members of Team Dick; Ms Marvel, Brawn, Scarlet and the foul-mouthed Rocket, walking through the door into the 1940s office. "Where is that skull masked prick? I want to introduce my gun to his junk." Rocket asked gruffly.

"Safe and sound." Mage grinned holding up the card emblazioned with the merc's likeness.

"No way." Scarlet gawped, fascinated by the magic.

"Shame, I wanted to personally thank him for nearly blowing us up." Ms Marvel huffed, cracking her knuckles.

"Blow you up?" Bullet worried, hurrying over to Scarlet and gripping her paws.

"No big deal, just a sword to the chest, y'know normal stuff." Scarlet smoothed over, kissing her wife on the cheek.

"But the bomb was a big deal, if Rocket hadn't disarmed it every train tunnel from here to New York would've been aflame." Brawn grimaced, holding onto the now deactivated bomb.

"Doctor Doom's mercenaries were trying to burn away all the evidence, even if that meant innocent lives were lost." Snowguard deduced.

"I just can't wait for Alice to interrogate ol' Taskmaster, he must know a way to get onto The Cauldron." Rocket thought out loud before looking at the odd bowl-shaped machine in the centre of the room "What the hell is that?"

"That's what I asked." Mage mumbled.

"It is an energy dampening device." Viv answered, lowering her hand.

"Meaning?" Laura prompted.

"This was where the portal was but to make sure it wasn't discovered these dampeners made sure SHIELD or Princess Shuri's scanners couldn't detect it." Brawn hypothesised.

"Can these computers open up the rift?" Scarlet asked Viv with hope.

"Impossible, I'm afraid." Viv answered, her voice stained with disappointment "Without the power source for the rifts we will not-"

The crack of the air stopped Viv's words, the heroes staggered back as a sphere of purple cloud emerged above the bowl. "Is that what I think it is?" Spiderman questioned, his eyes growing wide under his mask.

"The purple cloud! Get ready!" Scarlet shouted, retrieving her telescopic baton from her belt and extending it.

A few seconds later everybody in the room was poised to fight whatever came through the rift, but when a metal coated caracal landed at their feet everyone was left confused. The gentle Collosus asked the panting metal boy "Are you ok?"

"Wha?" The boy sounded, looking around him with amazement and fear, but as soon as he saw Bullet and Scarlet he exclaimed "Ceartais!?"

"Jason? Jason Alonso?" Scarlet gasped, lowering her baton.

"Hummingbird!" Jason yelled his fur returning to its normal state, hugging and latching onto Scarlet "Hummingbird! Hummingbird! It's Zoe's codeword!"

"Zoe? You saw Zoe?!" Scarlet nearly laughed with joy.

"What about a wolf called Clara?" Mage asked anxiously, stepping towards Scarlet cradling the frightened kid.

Then his answer came. Another figure fell through the rift, Mage lurched forward and caught the body, a form of amazing purple and green lights but soon the light faded, Mage's voice was chained as he saw the green eyes of the elemental form faded to a warm brown framed by black framed glasses. "Kodi?" Clara whispered.

Mage wanted to be cool, to be suave but he couldn't contain his feelings. He wrapped Clara in a hug, his voice was choked by tears as he said, "Hey you."

The tender moment was ruined by a crass tone of Rocket "Were you just on The Cauldron!?"

Clara seemed perplexed by the strange looking creatures around her but focused on the racoon asking the question "Uh, yeah." she replied, still reeling from her inter dimensional journey.

"That's all I needed to hear!" Rocket grinned, cocking his rifle before jumping into the rift.

"Rocket!" Ms Marvel snapped in shock, a second later the rift closed.

"Um...Is that bad?" Laura queried, noticing that Clara was staring at her with half fear/ half astonishment.

"Are...Are these mutants?" Clara asked with confusion, still hugging tightly onto her boyfriend.

000

Rocket didn't know what to expect jumping into the rift, but he didn't care if, it got him one step closer to Tazerface he didn't care if he was stepping through the gates of hell itself. Rocket landed on his feet, feeling the familiar sensation of artificial gravity take hold of his body, his experience of space travel didn't allow him to be overwhelmed, he had his gun ready to fire in his paws. Rocket immediately recognised the person in front of him, there was no mistaking Doctor Doom. The tyrant had a unknown bat pinned against the wall while the familiar figure of the Nightcrawler was chained to an upright operating table, Rocket didn't know what he had just walked into but that didn't faze him, he fired a laser blast from the kree rifle right above Doom's head, the villain flinched and released the pressure on the captive flying fox, who saw her chance and swiftly zipped out of the room with a flap of her wings. "Who dares shoots at Doom!?" Doctor Doom bellowed, angry that the soldier had escaped once again.

"One pissed off bounty hunter, how ya' doing Doomy?" Rocket sassed.

"The Guardian's pet." Doom hissed, looking down at the bounty hunter "This day keeps serving up disappointment after disappointment."

"Well you'll be happy to know I'm not here for you, I want ya' pilot." Rocket responded, not intimidated by the towering ruler.

"Tazerface? That lowlife?" Doom simmered, wondering how many ways he could make the hero cry out in pain.

"The very same. Now you know the damage I can do to this rust bucket you call a ship, so hand over Tazerface, put The Cauldron up on autopilot and I'll be on my merry way." Rocket bargained confidently.

"And what makes you think Doom would grant your request?" Doom asked back.

"Cos' I've got a big ol' firework here and you don't want it going off." Rocket answered with a grin, holding up a homemade magnetic explosive.

"Rocket!?" Nightcrawler gasped, surprised by the space fairing hero's threat.

"You have courage for one so small, but bravery is often mistaken for stupidity." Doom spoke while waving his hand, suddenly Rocket's makeshift weapon was in his hand.

"What the!?" Rocket barked, looking at his empty paw.

"Technology is a fantastic tool but magic is the original weapon." Doom replied, walking towards the unwelcome intruder.

"Ah crap." Rocket uttered, trying to scramble for his rifle.

Doom lifted Rocket by the scruff and tossed away the kree rifle "This day might not be all lost after all, Doom's got a Guardian of the Galaxy and one of Captain Marvel's best friends as a hostage." He then cast a sleeping spell on the thrashing mammal, causing the hero's body to go limp.

000

Agent Phil Coulson was the first to learn the bad news, the SHIELD agent had been looking at a bank of CCTV monitors observing the battle in the rail yard that was winding down to a close when a subordinate had come up to him saying the words he never thought he'd hear "Captain America is dead." Coulson felt numb, the hero he had grown idolising, the hero had a complete set of vintage trading cards of, the hero he had the pleasure of calling a friend was gone. His body was on auto pilot as he called The Avengers on the mission to tell the grim news, Coulson arrived at the subway station just as Iron Man and Captain Marvel landed outside the station, by the time as the three had gotten down to the platform Black Panther had come sprinting through an adjacent tunnel and had leapt onto the platform.

"Where is Rogers!?" Black Panther panted, worried for his old friend.

"Train JS13..." Iron Man answered, sounding shaken.

"Easy guys, keep a level head, we don't know if Andi is still on that train, she could have Luna has hostage." Captain Marvel reasoned, despite her own dread.

Coulson looked over at the stopped train, local Jersey City cops and paramedics were tending to the traumatised passengers. Coulson walked toward a police Sargent comforting an upset passenger and asked "I'm sorry to interrupt but is there anyone else on that train?"

"Just that fox woman, she won't leave Cap's body...everyone's saying she was trying to stop the bleeding, that red head got 'im with an arrow." The Seargent answered, her eyes showing her shock and her voice strained.

"No." Black Panther breathed, his vibranium nanite mask fading away.

"Come on." Captain Marvel beckoned, leading her fellow Avengers, plus Coulson, onto the train.

Captain Marvel was no stranger to death, she was an air force colonel and been a hero for too long not to lose fellow heroes and friends but when she saw Captain America's lifeless body her heart flared up with the same sadness and loss she had felt too many occasions through her life but it was Iron Man who gave the grief words "Oh god..."

Black Panther took in the whole scene, he saw the arrow protruding through Cap's throat despite the entirety of his skin been stained crimson with blood. A beaten, wheezing and weeping Luna was on her knees beside the fallen soldier, her paws and uniform caked in blood. "Luna." Black Panther said, approaching the vixen as calmly as possible.

"I tried to stop...but the blood, it just..." Luna wept, her crying amber eyes fixed on Cap's face.

"All the reports said you both saved lives." Black Panther consoled, kneeling beside Luna and taking hold of the vixen.

"But I didn't save his!" Luna snapped, not at T'Challa, but at herself.

Iron Man flipped up the front of his helmet looked down at his friend of nearly twenty years, he took a knee and used his fingers to shut Captain America's eyes "Damn it Steve, I thought you'd outlive us all." Tony choked on his words, unable to mask his sadness.

"I hesitated. Andi was right, I could've stopped this happening." Luna cried, replaying the altercation in head, over and over.

"Luna this isn't on you, we heard the witness reports over the radio." Captain Marvel tried to comfort but imagined it wouldn't do much good.

"We need to get him out of here and tell the other teams." Coulson said, trying to keep professional despite his feelings "They'll probably transport his body to Washington, lay him in state."

"Steve wouldn't want that." Captain Marvel corrected, picking up Cap's shield off the floor and placing it on his chest "He's a Brooklyn boy, we're taking him home."

000

The newly freed Clara and Jason stuck close to the mammals of Team Ceartais, despite the physicist being familiar with the blue mutant Kurt Wagner she couldn't help but wary of these strange looking creatures. Neither of the newly arrived mammals understood the conversations that were transpiring around them; Captain America killed by Andi, Doombots defeated in the railyard, Taskmaster and Kraven in SHIELD custody, all these words were a foreign to them as this world they found themselves in. Jason had latched onto Clara and hardly spoke a word as they were led to a fleet of SUVs by the sullen Team Ceartais and The Champions.

Ceartais and The Champions arrived back at the SHIELD owned apartment building, the traumatised Luna had rushed into the building first being closely followed by Scarlet, the sisters getting in a separate elevator to the others. "Is Andraste ok?" Clara asked anxiously, she had only caught a glance of the archer but she had noticed the large amounts of blood staining her outfit.

"Uh, no." Kodi answered, taking off his domino mask "We lost a friend today."

"Oh..." Clara sounded, unsure of how to react.

"But don't worry about that now, you're safe, Jason's safe and we're one step closer to rescuing everyone." Bullet eased the professor's worries.

"Coulson told us we'll debrief tomorrow, everyone...everyone needs to process what happened to Cap." Ms Marvel told Clara "Tonight you just rest up."

"You finally got your girlfriend back," Snowguard smiled sadly at Kodi "Cap would count that as a win."

The sound of a crying sniff caught everyone's attention, the source of the sound was Spiderman "Um, listen I'm going to the head back home for tonight, my parents have been texting me like crazy." he tried to distract.

"Spidey it's ok to cry, we're all hurting." Brawn assured, his own expression was weighted by sadness.

"I know, but I just want to see my parents." Spiderman waved off, before firing off a web and zipping down the street.

"Whoa." Jason murmured, amazed by the webslinger.

"Is that sort of thing normal in this dimension?" Clara queried.

"Pretty much, it's kind of nice that we're not the only freaks here." Kion shrugged, the lion had returned to his normal size.

There was a rumble of thunder that echoed through the skies of Manhattan just as the rain began to fall "Let's get inside." Spitfire suggested, guiding the group into the apartment building.

While the teams rode up in the elevators, Kion looked down at Jason and smiled "Jason, I know you've been through a lot today and you've been so brave but I promise it's going to be ok."

The young caracal was gripping Clara's paw tightly, he was fidgety and nervous as he replied "But all my friends are on that ship."

"Not all of them." Kion responded, the doors to their floor opened and he added "There is one friend that has really missed you."

Bullet walked forward and opened the door for the others, they were greeted with the sight of an upset Scarlet explaining the situation to bewildered looking Arthur. For the first time in an hour Jason let go of Clara's paw, he bounded into the apartment cheering "Arthur!"

"Jason!?" Arthur gasped, crouching down and opening his arms.

"You're alive!" Jason celebrated hugging onto his friend.

"I can't believe it." Arthur breathed, hugging the child back "You were always a survivor."

The heroes took some comfort out of this reunion, they had lost an ally and friend today but two lives had been saved, one of them a child, this was a hollow victory but a victory none the less. Before Arthur could ask any questions, the sound of rushed footsteps from down the hallway leading to the bedrooms was heard "Luna, come back and talk to me!" Alice's voice pleaded.

"This won't take long!" Luna cried, storming out of the hall, dressed in her blood stained uniform with a sports bag slung across her shoulder.

"Luna?" Spitfire called after, but Luna barged by the mech and out the door.

 _"Mon Amour!"_ Alice fretted, hurrying after her wife only to be stopped by a hug from her sister-in-law.

"Lu needs to do this on her own, Alice." Scarlet soothed, the red clad heroine fully aware of what her big sister was about to do.

"But she's upset, she needs to be with you and me, we can comfort her." Alice worried aloud.

"She told me Cap gave her some advice this morning, she's taking it." Scarlet said, looking out the door and hoped her sister's mental state wasn't about to fracture once more.

Luna was very aware of the concerned looks she was getting from the SHIELD agents stationed throughout the building, she knew she looked an emotional wreck because that's exactly how she felt. But she needed to do this, she couldn't save Steve Rogers but she swore to avenge him and this was the first step. As soon as the elevator doors opened up on the ground floor Luna hurried by the SHIELD agents guarding the lobby, when she stepped outside she found the rumbles of thunder had transformed into a downpour of rain. The droplets were bouncing off the pavement as normal citizens rushed by for shelter, but Luna didn't care about the rain even though she was getting drenched, she walked around the building and into an alley and found what she was looking for; a trash can. "No more." Luna cried, lifting the lid of the metal trash can "No more excuses, no more being scared, no more shame." The archer then unzipped the sports bag, within was her spare Andraste uniform in case the one she was wearing was damaged and stuffed it into the garbage. Luna then took a deep breath and set her bow down on the ground before unsheathing her daggers and tossing them in the trash, she then removed her leather pants leaving her in a pair of athletic shorts, she then took off her jacket not caring that she was only stood in a black sports bra and flung into the bin. Luna looked at the bow on the ground and considered if she should throw it away but it was a gift from her late grandfather, she wasn't giving this up. She picked up the bow and walked away, throwing her domino mask over her shoulder, it missed the bin and landed in a puddle "I am Andraste, no more."

(AN/DUN DUN DUN! Luna quits her Andraste persona! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Kodi and Clara catch up, Doom plans his counterattack, Rocket meets the prisoners, Luna gains a new ally and heroes gather to pay their respects to Captain America. Please Review and C YA soon!)


	32. Schemes

(AN/ Hey Folks it's Garouge/Crewefox with another The Broken Mirror chapter! Thank you for all the supportive messages over the last week regarding my family situation and for all the lovely reviews, reblogs, likes and follows. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 31- Schemes**

Rocket Racoon was stirring from his forced slumber, the first thing he noticed was that both his wrists felt heavy, he opened up his tired eyes to find himself in a position he had been in too many times; in a prison cell. He sat up on his bottom bunk and looked at his wrists to see prisoner tracker bracelets on each one, he recognised the right one as a 'Hornet', this cruel device activated if the prisoner stepped out of line it would inject a toxin that makes the victim vomit violently for about ten minutes.

"Well, shit." Rocket griped, this was the fourth time for him wearing the device.

"Here's a tip new guy, don't use your powers." A voice cautioned.

Rocket turned to see someone sitting at the small table in the cell, she was a lynx with a swollen muzzle "Geez, what happened to you? You get hit with a freight ship?" Rocket asked, thinking it was weird that he was sharing a cell with a female, most prison ships paired inmates with matching genders.

"The asshole that runs this place punched me after I trashed his lab." Esso answered, appreciating that her new cellmate wasn't fussing over her.

"Damn you survived a punch from Doctor Doom? That's hardcore." Rocket replied, sounding impressed.

"Wait, you've met him already? Usually arrivals from Zootopia are just tossed in a cell and given orientation the next day." Esso mumbled.

"Zootopia? Oh that's the place Bullet and her crew are from." Bullet said, hopping off his bunk.

"Bullet? As in the superhero? You know Ceartais?" Esso asked, suddenly a lot more interested in her new cell mate.

"Yeesh, what's with all the questions lady?" Rocket grunted, checking all his pockets for any tech or small weapons, only to find they had been confiscated.

"Did you come through the same rift Jason, Zoe and Clara went through!?" Esso asked anxiously, grabbing the bounty hunter by the arm.

"Who the hell are they?" Rocket reacted, shaking Esso's paw off.

"A caracal boy, a bat with dyed hair and a light coloured she-wolf wearing glasses, did you see them?" Esso asked forcefully.

"You mean that metal cat kid and Mage's girlfriend? Yeah last time I saw em' they were safe and sound back in New York." Rocket answered, irked by the feline's frantic attitude.

"They escaped? Fuck yeah!" Esso cheered "I knew Clara could pull it off...wait, the bat, did you see a bat come through the rift?"

"Nah, when I landed on this piece of crap ship Doom was about to kill her, I distracted him and she escaped down a hallway." Rocket said, wondering how many answers he'd have to give to shut this cat up.

"At least she's alive." Esso breathed "I best introduce you to Vanessa and the others, they'll want to know all the details."

"You tell em', I gotta' plan how I'm going to get on the bridge of this ship." Rocket waved off.

"It's not really safe for me out there at the moment." Esso dodged.

"Why?" Rocket asked, arching a brow.

"I kinda', sorta', stabbed a fellow inmate to death a few days ago and now everyone either runs a mile away from me or wants to bash my skull in." Esso answered in awkward manner.

Rocket was unfazed by the revelation of his new cellmate being a killer, he simply asked "Did the asshole deserve it?"

"He was blackmailing me." Esso glossed over.

"Fair nuff'" Rocket shrugged before sighing "Fine introduce me to this Vanessa chick."

"This way." Esso beckoned, opening the cell door out into the shared space cafeteria.

Rocket noticed all the scared and scornful looks from mammals aimed at Esso making him believe the feline's story. However, he spotted a stag and a mare look towards them without negativity, they looked somewhat relieved. "Esso." Regina opened timidly, the tall horse was studying the cat's face "How's the nose?"

"I've had worse and by the looks of it, I'll probably have a shiv in my gut by the end of the day so a busted nose is the least of my worries." Esso half joked, well aware of the looks being aimed at her.

"I can't believe you destroyed solitary." Harper spoke "When I saw a Doombot carry you to your old cell I couldn't believe it."

"As much as I would love to brag how about awesome I am, we got more important things to talk about namely this racoon next to me." Esso moved the conversation forward "Where's Vanessa?"

"You called?" Vanessa replied, walking in from the bathroom block.

Rocket looked at Vanessa with a somewhat startled expression, he had never seen another racoon like him, all the others he had run across naked and unevolved, plus he had never seen another female of his species "You the boss around here?" he asked crassly.

"I'm boss of no one but sometimes the other prisoners look to me for leadership." Vanessa answered, looking at the bounty hunter's attire with suspicion "Did they pick you up at a comic con or something?"

Before Rocket could reply Esso butted in with "He's not from Zootopia or even our dimension, I think he's from the same universe Kurt is from."

"Kurt? You mean Nightcrawler? Yeah we're from the same dimension." Rocket cleared up.

"But he told Clara there was no sentient mammals on his earth." Harper remembered.

"I'm a science experiment gone wrong, I'm not a normal racoon." Rocket clarified "Now can someone please tell me how I can get to the bridge?"

"Wait a second, you need to tell them what you told me." Esso cut in.

"Listen lady I don't even know your name and you're telling me what to do, you're making it very hard for me not to punch you." Rocket snapped.

"The name's Esso, dipshit and if you're going to punch me, just do it, I don't care but tell them what you told me!" Esso barked back.

"Ok, ok, let's calm things down." Vanessa eased as she stepped between the two "Now would you kindly explain what Esso's talking about, Mr?"

"It's just Rocket, I ain't no mister." The hero answered bitterly "And the basics of it is; the wolf and the cat kid escaped through the rift but the bat is still on the ship, happy now?"

"Jason and Clara escaped!?" Regina exclaimed, clutching her hoofs to her chest "Thank god."

"That's not all, he's been working with Ceartais." Esso added.

"So, you're part of the rescue team?" Harper asked with hope in his voice.

"Pfft, no." Rocket dismissed "Look Bullet and her crew's destination lined up with mine, I was looking to get on this ship and so were they. I saw the rift and jumped through it."

"Why in the hell would you want to come onto The Cauldron?" Vanessa asked, crossing her arms.

"Cos' the pilot of this rust bucket is a piece of shit with a bounty on his head that I want to collect." Rocket answered, not caring about the disapproving gaze from Vanessa.

"So, you're not here to rescue us, you're here to make money?" Vanessa asked, sounding irked.

"Ya' got it, sweet cheeks." Rocket winked before holding up his wrist "However this 'Hornet' bracelet is going to make things difficult."

"Doom had his robots put them on us after we caused a riot, if we even use our powers for more than a few seconds we start throwing up." Harper grimaced, the stag could still detect the acidic aftertaste of vomit in his mouth.

"Meh' I can work with this, give me a few days and I'll be in control of this ship." Rocket grinned.

"And what makes you think you can achieve that?" Esso snorted.

"Well if you must know sourpuss, I've escaped from twenty-two prisons back in my galaxy, this ship is going to be my bitch by the time I'm finished with her." Rocket smirked, the cogs in his head were already turning.

000

The SHIELD safehouse was getting overcrowded, with the latest arrivals of Clara and Jason there was now no beds for them to sleep in. Lucky for the mammals SHIELD owned the entire building so Dragoness authorised for the adjoining apartment to be made available to the Zootopians. It was hard to get any privacy in the first apartment so Clara and Kodi went next door to talk, and they had a lot to talk about.

"...By the time the Doombots burst through the door my entire body was glowing with this weird purple light and was able to shoot lighting from my paws, the next thing I knew I was being thrown into the rift by a blast...I just hope Zoe's ok." Clara finished her tale while looking out across this alien version of her home city, New York. The two wolves were stood by the window, standing close to one another but not touching, they were both hiding their nerves after seeing one another again.

"I've known Zoe for a while now and she's a lot tougher than she looks, she'll be ok. Besides Rocket's on The Cauldron now, he'll be able to help her and the other kidnapped mammals." Kodi assured, the wolf was dressed in his hero garb but had taken off his domino mask.

Clara noticed Kodi stealing a longing look at her before teasing "I've got to say I'm impressed Jones."

"By what?" Kodi asked, his brown eyes darting away.

"Well by my count it's been about eight days since you last saw me and you haven't grabbed me, kissed me or tried to have your wicked way with me. You trying to play it cool or something?" Clara smiled up at him.

Kodi took a moment to find the right words, not wanting put his foot in it "I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to hold you in my arms and kiss you, but I can't imagine the hell you went through on that ship. I figured you just wanted time to adjust to everything, to this dimension, to all the weirdness."

"Oh, this place is weird, these human creatures are just straight up bizarre but that doesn't mean I didn't miss you Kodi." Clara spoke, stepping closer and nuzzling her muzzle into his neck.

Kodi breathed in Clara's scent and felt his skin heat up under his fur, he acted on his instincts and went in for a kiss which the she-wolf gladly reciprocated, it lasted for a dozen or so seconds and when it ended Kodi said in a haze "A year in the making."

"Hmm?" Clara sounded, perplexed by the words.

"When you said it had been eight days for me, that isn't technically correct, you might want to add another three hundred and sixty-five days to that." Kodi replied, still holding Clara close.

"It's been over a year!?" Clara gasped "Oh crap, did I get my calculations wrong!?"

"You didn't get anything wrong, I was in a place where time moves differently, it was a day in this world but in the dormitory a year passed." Kodi said, starting to wish he hadn't said anything so they could go back to making out.

"That's impossible." Clara spoke, shaking her head.

Kodi felt mischievous and cast a spell so that he teleported into a chair across the room before replying "That's magic."

Clara staggered back, stunned by what she just saw "I thought you didn't have powers, I thought it was tech!?" she babbled.

"I didn't. But when I found out what kind of sick man Doom was, I knew I had to up my game. Magic exists in this dimension and I found someone willing to teach me." Kodi answered, rising from his chair and letting his new uniform fade away replacing it with his casual civilian attire.

"You spent a year learning magic just in case you faced Doom?" Clara gawped, blinking rapidly.

"...No. I, um..." Kodi tried to say, but he knew it would sound weird but also knew that the tenacious physicist would weasel the answer out of him eventually "I learnt it so I'd have a better shot of saving you."

"Kodi." Clara muttered.

"Silly, isn't it? We've only been dating a short time and go do something like that. And even after I learned magic you didn't me to save you. You were amazing enough to save yourself and Jason." Mage rambled, unable to look Clara in the eyes due to embarrassment.

Kodi should've kept his eyes on Clara, the she-wolf ran at him and pounced on him causing him to fall back into the armchair, he was about to react but was halted by a deep and passionate kiss from Clara who had straddled him. When Clara eventually released him from the snog she hastily removed her sweater and began to unbutton the blouse underneath it is causing Kodi to ask in a shocked voice "What are you doing?"

"I just learnt that my boyfriend sacrificed a year of his life in the pursuit of rescuing me, even though we just started our relationship most mammals might find that weird but not me. Honestly I've never been more attracted to you than I am right now." Clara smiled lustfully, opening her blouse to reveal her underwear and using her paws to guide Kodi's own paws up her skirt to caress her thighs.

Kodi would've asked 'Are you sure?' but he could see the hunger in Clara's eyes, he submitted to her will and took a breath before letting a long mating howl escape from his mouth with Clara howling along with him.

000

After Luna had returned from dumping her Andraste uniform in the trash, the soaked vixen took a long shower before crawling into bed, all the while Alice had been keeping a close eye on her wife. The doe had tried to nap next to Luna but the lack of tiredness and her worry for the archer's wellbeing prevented this, all Alice could do was lay beside Luna and gently stroke the fur of Luna's cheek.

 _In her slumber, Luna was dreaming. She had fallen asleep feeling grief and torment so she was surprised to be dreaming of happier times. Luna was stood in the back yard of her paternal grandparents, when she was little Robin Senior would collect Luna from school and look after her until her parents finished their shift at the precinct. The little vixen was still dressed in a yellow summer dress topped off with a green ribbon on her head and had a toy bow and arrow in her paws. The girl was given this gift by her Granddad Robin much to the displeasure of her dad Nick who at protested that his baby girl shouldn't have any sort of weapon, even if it was a toy one but eventually Robin sr. Had warned his son down pointing out that he had his own bow by age seven and Luna was now eight. Luna had set up a row of cans on the patio table for target practice and for this she had an audience "Ok Robbie, I'm going to shoot every single one of those cans, watch closely." Luna said, looking down at the one-year old Robyn clutching her plushie rabbit, however the infant seemed more interested in chewing on one her long rabbit like ears._

" _Lu." Robyn replied with a mouth full of ear, the toddler only knew a dozen or so words and couldn't fully say Luna yet._

" _Just watch, this is going to be cool." Luna smiled, drawing her first arrow and firing at the tin can, it found it's mark and fell over, the vixen then fired off four more arrows in quick succession, she then twirled and cheered "Ta-da!"_

" _Lu! Lu!" Robyn yipped, clapping happily._

" _One day I'll be good as Granddad, Dad and Uncle Jack." Luna bragged, going over and collecting her toy arrows to put them back in her quiver._

" _I think you'll be better." A warm and friendly voice said to her from behind._

 _Luna and Robyn turned around to see the towering figure of Little John coming out the back door of the house "Hi Little John." Luna chirped, skipping over and hugging the grizzly bear._

" _Little!" Robyn giggled, she still couldn't form the word John. The toddler waddling over to hug the much bigger mammal._

" _Now how are the sweetest angels in all of Zootopia?" Little John asked, picking up the sisters._

" _I was just showing Robbie my bow skills." Luna smiled, she always loved being picked up by bigger mammals, it made her feel taller._

" _I can see that. Looks like you'll be giving your old Granddad a run for his money soon enough." Little John replied, noticing that the teething Robyn was chewing on the sleeve of his jacket and chuckling at the cute sight._

" _You think I could be a hero like Granddad someday?" Luna asked brightly._

 _Little John looked uncomfortable upon hearing this question but carefully answered "I think you'll be a bigger hero if you become a doctor like you've been talking about."_

" _I can be a doctor to." Luna huffed "Don't you think I can be a hero?"_

" _Of course, I do," Little John quickly replied, not wanting to upset the child "but Zootopia doesn't need superheroes anymore. We got heroes in the hospitals, the fire stations and the ZPD. Your Mom and Dad are the real heroes."_

" _But you, Nana and Grandad were superheroes, why can't I be one?" Luna asked, tilting her head._

 _John walked over and sat down on a garden a chair, with one Wilde sister on each knee before sighing "Well we were weird, angel."_

" _All grownups are weird." Luna replied, looking downtrodden at the response._

 _Little John felt a pang of guilt, he looked around the backyard and an idea quickly formed "Saying that though, if something did happen like Aliens from outer space attacking, I guess a little superhero could help." Little John smiled._

" _Aliens?" Luna asked, screwing her muzzle up._

" _It could happen." Little John shrugged "Tell you what, you see that yard brush over there by the shed, grab it and slide the brush head off, I'm going to teach you how use a staff in case aliens beam down."_

 _Luna liked the idea of this game, she hopped off Little John's knee and retrieved the brush handle "Ok what do I do?"_

" _Ok so you're going to practice twirling, use both your paws the twirl the stick smoothly." Little John instructed._

 _Luna tried and instantly dropped the wooden handle, she picked it up and tried again only to fail, by the fourth time she dropped it she whinged "This is hard."_

" _It's supposed to be, but if you practice at anything you'll become better at it. Now try again."_

 _Luna used her paws to twirl the makeshift staff very slowly, a smile grew on her face and she eventually made a full circle with it "I did it!"_

" _See, you can do anything angel." Little John smiled._

" _Lu! Lu!" Little Robyn cheered, looking at her big sister with wonder._

"Lu will tell you what's going on when she's ready." Robyn's sharp tone stirred Luna from her sleep, she looked around her to see she was still in bed, but Alice was gone, she focused her hearing on the heated words coming from the living room.

"Robyn I just need to know what we're dealing with." Olivia said briskly, the mouse was stood on the coffee table.

"I promised her I'd let her tell you all, I'm not breaking that promise." Robyn insisted.

"Will you two be quiet?" Arthur hushed, rustling up some healthy snacks in the kitchen area for Alice "You'll wake Luna and Jason." The Caracal boy was napping in one of the bedrooms.

Alice was sat on the sofa between Snowguard and Wasp, the worried bunny was stress eating some fresh carrots, in between chewing she spoke "I've never seen her this upset before."

"She went through something terrible today," Iron Heart sympathised, the engineer was sat at the dining table taking apart Clara and Jason's prisoner bracelets to see if she could find any clue about The Cauldron "Robyn's right, we need to let her rest and she'll tell us what's happening when she's ready."

"I still can't believe Cap's gone," Brawn sighed, checking his phone and reading messages from the upset Ms Marvel and Spiderman who had both gone home for comfort from their loved ones "it just doesn't feel real."

"My father is taking the news rather badly but he insists I stay in New York and on mission." Viv informed.

"Your Dad and Captain America were friends?" Kion asked, wondering if Viv's father was a human who built her.

"Yes, my father has fought alongside Captain Rogers countless times and they were close outside missions too." Viv answered with a sad smile, remembering first meeting the old soldier not long after being activated "My father will be visiting Captain Rogers when he's laid out in church tomorrow."

"Why's this moving so fast? He's only been dead a few hours." Snowguard lamented, the newest champion didn't know Cap as well as the others but he had always been nice to her.

"Steve had Irish parents, he's a catholic and they tend to bury their dead quickly." Wasp answered, feeling dread at the prospect of seeing Cap in his coffin.

Olivia sympathised with the human heroes and her best friend but she still needed to know what the situation was "Robyn, I know you promised Luna you'd keep quiet about what she told you. But for the sake of the team I need to know right now what's going on."

"Olivia, please." Robyn replied, trying her best not to lose her temper with the mouse.

"Drop it, Olivia. Robyn's not going to say anything." Hannah advised.

"Look the next time we go into battle I want to know if I have my second in command with me. Because finding out that your teammate has dumped her gear and most her weapons in the rubbish is setting off some alarm bells in my head." Olivia tried to persuade.

"Maybe stop thinking of her as teammate and more like a friend." Robyn grunted.

"What are you getting at?" Olivia threw back, narrowing her eyes.

"Get your mind out of the mission is what I mean. Your best friend went through hell today and you just wanna' know if your battle formations are screwed up now." Robyn snarled, glaring down at the mouse.

"Girls." Alice spoke in a warning tone, rising from her seat, knowing a shouting match was about to commence.

"I'm thinking about the mammals still trapped on The Cauldron, we came to this dimension to save them, remember?" Olivia snapped.

"I get that but for the sake of a few hours switch off being a leader and show some damn compassion...what am I saying? You don't know how to turn off." Robyn replied bitterly.

Kion and Alice exchanged a set of awkward looks, knowing what Robyn was referring to. Hannah realised this to and eased "Ok you two, dial it back."

"No, no." Olivia waved off "I want to know what Robyn means."

"One word; Blake." Robyn said, knowing the name would burn Olivia.

" _Merde."_ Alice whispered, face palming.

"This isn't going to be pretty." Kion uttered while The Champions looked on in awkward silence.

"Oh, you bitch." Olivia growled at the hybrid.

"Tell me I'm wrong. You couldn't switch off being a hero and lost the love of your life in the process, now you are doing the same mistake only with your best friend." Robyn sniped.

"Princess, that's not fair." Hannah protested at her wife's mean words.

"Ya' listen to me ya' big eared ginger hag, I've been with Luna through more than you ever have!" Olivia exploded angrily with tears in her eyes "When Little John was murdered, I was there. When your littermates died, I was there. When Miss Todd was cremated, I was there. So don't you dare tell me I don't care for her. I'm more of a sister to her than an angry little brat like you."

"Screw you!" Robyn shouted back, gritting her teeth.

"ENOUGH!" A loud shout rang out through the room rendering the two silent, everyone turned to see Luna standing in the hallway dressed in her pyjamas and wearing a disapproving look on her muzzle.

" _Mon Amour."_ Alice spoke, hurrying over to her wife and hugging her.

"Luna...we didn't mean to wake you." Olivia said, looking ashamed.

"Yeah...sorry Lu." Robyn added, her ears going droopy.

"It isn't me you should be apologising to." Luna said curtly "A good man died today and you two are arguing like petty children. Oh and Robbie, that was a low blow using Blake and Olivia don't you dare use our friendship against my baby sister."

"Sorry, Lu." Robyn mumbled, feeling guilty.

"I'm sorry." Olivia said, humbled by her oldest friend.

"Like I said don't apologise to me, apologise to each other." Luna corrected, after a few seconds of silence she prompted "I said apologise."

Robyn looked down at Olivia and sighed "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, sorry. I was out of line." Olivia replied, looking embarrassed.

"Ok." Luna breathed, closing her eyes for a moment and gathering her thoughts before continuing "I'm not quitting the team, I'm just giving up being Andraste."

"What?" Kion reacted "Wait so you're just going to go on missions as yourself?"

"For the time being, yes." Luna confirmed.

"But why?" Alice asked anxiously.

"Because Dragoness was right, Andraste was the last piece of my other self that I clung onto." Luna answered, taking hold of the doe's paw.

"She got into your head, she just said that to mess with you." Alice replied.

"But she was right...and back at Avengers tower Steve gave me some advice about choosing who I'm supposed to be, and it's not Andraste." Luna eased her love's anxiety.

"And until you find your new persona we'll be right beside you." Hannah supported.

"So how are you feeling? After today?" Olivia asked, noticing that her friend's amber eyes were puffy and bloodshot from crying.

"I honestly haven't felt like this since Nana and Grandad died." Luna confessed "But their deaths didn't stop me being a hero and neither will Cap's. We're going to get him the justice he deserves."

It would've been a heartfelt moment, everyone was united in their grief for the fallen hero and the determination to bring down his killer but then the sound of howling from the next-door apartment ruined the moment. After a few moments Brawn looked over at Arthur and noticed the uncomfortable look on his face "Um, don't wolves usually howl along when they hear it?"

"Not that type of howl." Arthur replied in an embarrassed manner.

"Is that Kodi and Clara?" Snowguard asked the obvious.

"Oh gross." Robyn exclaimed, realising what she was hearing.

"What?" Iron Heart queried, wondering why the mammals were looking disturbed by the howling.

"It's a, well, a mating howl." Olivia answered her fellow engineer.

"Ooooooh, they're getting freaky." Wasp chuckled.

"Just be glad you don't have super senses." Hannah shuddered while hearing, smelling and detecting all the movement coming from neighbouring apartment.

000

The next day came and the world knew that one of its greatest heroes was gone. Iron Man had been right, the government did try and get Cap's body laid in state in Washington but The Avengers insisted they respect the fallen soldier's wishes. Crowds had gathered outside the St. Christoper church in Brooklyn where Steve Rogers had been baptised as a child and now where his body was laid out for his friends to say goodbye. SHIELD were providing security for the church and controlling who went in, until 2pm only heroes and friends of Cap would be able to pay their respects after that the general public would be allowed in. Most of Team Ceartais and The Champions had gone earlier in the day but Luna didn't want to be fussed over by her friends so she went later with only Alice as her escort. The couple were both in black dresses as they walked into the church and noticed some of The Avengers dotted around as well as some odd-looking heroes they didn't know.

The pair walked past a guy wearing a red devil outfit talking to towering man who's skin was made of orange rocks. "When I heard it on the radio I didn't believe it and now I'm here I just don't want to." Daredevil spoke in a sombre tone.

"I know it's hard red but we got give this Brooklyn boy a decent send off." The Thing replied, but his huge rocky hand on Daredevil's shoulder.

"Well I'll lead the Hell's Kitchen crowd then." Daredevil smiled sadly.

Alice spotted Black Panther at the altar, stood in a designer black suit with a matching shirt and tie. He looked at Luna and Alice and opened his arms "Mrs and Mrs Wilde." he greeted.

" _Bonjour_ T'Challa." Alice greeted back, hugging the king.

"When I heard you two had not journeyed with the others I was worried." Black Panther said before hugging Luna "How are you, Luna?"

"Let's not focus on me, this is about Cap." Luna said, appreciating the monarch's concern.

"Of course." Black Panther nodded, standing up. He took a look at Alice, more specifically her bump, and smiled "Those babies of yours are growing fast."

"They are indeed, I honestly don't know how human women handle nine months of pregnancy." Alice replied.

Luna could hear the crowds outside and sighed "I heard on the news that there are nearly ten thousand people out there, Cap meant a lot to them."

"Steve meant a lot to all of us, but he died saving the lives of those people on that train, he would be content with that." Black Panther spoke, looking over at the coffin where Captain Marvel was standing.

"I think...I think I'm going to say hi to Steve." Luna quietly rallied himself.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Alice asked, squeezing Luna's hand.

"No, I just..." Luna struggled.

"It's ok, I won't be far." Alice assured, letting her lover go.

Luna took a few steps towards the Coffin where Captain Marvel was stood, but not in her superhero flight suit but her air force uniform. The flying ace lent over the coffin and laid a kiss on the departed hero's cheek before standing back up and saluting him "Sleep easy, Steve. We'll keep a watch on the world." then she wiped away her tears, it's at that point she noticed Luna "Oh, hey."

"Hey." Luna said meekly.

"You are doing ok?" Captain Marvel asked kindly "Sorry, dumb question."

"I'm better today, not good but better." Luna answered honestly, the two shared a look of understanding before the airwoman stepped away and let Luna pass towards the coffin.

Luna to the few steps to the coffin, her short stature just able to look over the rim of the coffin at his body. Steve was dressed in his army uniform with his many medals adorned on his chest instead of his Captain America outfit, his face appeared calm and peaceful in it's eternal slumber. "Hi Cap." Luna opened with simply "It's strange I'm not even thirty and I've been to more funerals than I count and I still don't know what to say at this moment. I've got the expectation that I'm supposed something profound but I was never one for fancy words. I'm sorry that I hesitated, I could've saved you if I just slashed your arm but I didn't and nothing will ever make up for that. Hey, guess what? I took your advice about ditching the 'Andraste' persona, you should have seen me I was one big mess but even though I'm devastated by what happened to you I made a vow, I'm going to avenge you Steve and I'm not going to stop until Andi has paid for what she did. I promise." Luna knew if she stood there a second longer she erupt with a wail so she scurried back over to Alice who was waiting with a comforting embrace.

"I'm here." Alice reassured, feeling the vixen trembling with quiet tears.

At that moment the sound of rushed footsteps put all the heroes in the room on high alert but they calmed when they saw who running up the aisle; a crying man with shoulder length brown hair who looked like he hadn't slept, dressed in a plain hoodie and jeans, he would've looked normal if it weren't for his left arm being a cybernetic prosthetic.

Captain Marvel took hold of the man before he reached the coffin and willed "Easy Bucky, easy soldier."

"I need to see him, Carol." Bucky choked on his tears.

Captain Marvel looked at the old man and asked, "Did you just come from the airport?"

"Y-yeah, I was on a SHIELD mission in the Philippines when I got the news." Bucky answered, finding it hard to control his crying.

"Oh, Buck." Captain Marvel said with sympathy knowing the deep connection the two old friends shared. She released Bucky and let him go to Steve's body.

Bucky laid his eyes on the corpse of his best friend and uttered "This is isn't right." Bucky then placed his hand on Steve's cold departed hand and held it "I'm sorry, Steve. I'm so sorry."

From the crowd of other heroes, Tony Stark stepped forward with Captain America's signature shield in his hands, the billionaire had clearly been crying in the last few minutes but he composed himself and made his way over to Bucky "Barnes." Tony greeted bluntly, causing Bucky to look up from the body.

"Stark." Bucky responded, the two had a difficult history but both had the respect for Steve to keep things civil.

"Steve told me, if anything ever happened to him that he wanted you to have this." Tony said, handing the shield to shaken Bucky.

"...Thank you, Tony." Bucky replied sincerely.

Luna and Alice had no idea who this Bucky person was but it was clear that he was closer to Steve than anyone else. Luna was about to go offer the man her condolences when she spotted someone at the back of the church, towards the candle offerings and it was the exact person Luna wanted to talk to. "I'll be back in a sec." Luna whispered to Alice before walking to the back of the church and around the corner where rows of candles were lit in front of a statue of the virgin Mary and there lighting a candle was Dragoness.

"Never had you down as the religious type." Luna said.

"I'm not, I'm just paying my respects to Cap, just like you." The Inhuman replied, sounding a lot less confrontational than usual "I saw the security footage from the train...I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well...I'm sorry for letting Cap die." Luna spoke her feelings.

"That isn't on you, it was Andi...And I was wrong for making light of your mental health, I guess I'm still grieving another death." Dragoness spoke.

"I'm going to cut to the chase before someone overhears us." Luna said, looking around her to make sure no one was listening "I need your help with something."

"My help? With what?" Dragoness asked, puzzled.

"I need your help to kill Andi." Luna stated.

000

Doctor Doom was furious. The tyrant known for his cruelty and rage had to keep his temper at bay though, normally he would destroy everything around in a red mist but The Cauldron had already taken enough damage in the riot and any more carnage would delay his plans further. But he wouldn't let Clara's trickery slide, he would have his revenge.

Doom was sat in his throne room looking at the projected holograms of Andi and Ronin, who were both kneeling with respect to their employer. The pair had just finished their report and it did nothing to improve the dictator's mood "So Taskmaster and Kraven were captured, that's unfortunate."

 **"Forgive us, Lord Doom. Had we known of their plight we would've worked to free them. We only realised they had been captured once they failed to report to the hideout."** Ronin grovelled.

"Save your apologies, SHIELD will be sure to have them under increased security after what happened with Crossbones, trying to silence them would be a risky endeavour." Doom mused "But Doom does have a new mission for you."

 **"Yes, m'lord?"** Andi replied.

"Doom needs you to kill all of Team Ceartais, Professor Bloom, that fool Arthur Knight, the brat Caracal and The Champions. In one fell swoop, preferably." Doom informed, his wrathful nature barely concealed in his voice

 **"But Lord Doom, to do that we would require more Doombots and most of them were destroyed in New Jersey."** Ronin said, keeping her tone respectful.

 **"Actually, I got a pretty wicked idea to take them all out. You know that asshole Justin Hammer? Well he owes me a favour and he can get us some very cool toys."** Andi spoke up **"But we'll need to track them all down for this to work."**

"Fear not, assassins." Doom said, pressing a button on the arm of his throne causing a holographic map of New York to be projected from the ceiling "Before the caracal boy could be rescued from the lab one of the machines did manages to implant a vital sign monitor under his skin, this also serves as a tracking device. Your hunt just became a lot easier."

" **Ok, it'll take me a day to organise the toy delivery.** " Andi smiled, looking at the map.

 **"It will be done, Lord Doom."** Ronin promised.

Doom nodded before adding "And one more thing, if you get the chance separate Professor Bloom from the others then skin her alive. Doom wants her pelt to adorne the floor."

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Luna going back to her ruthless way?! What does Andi have in store for the team?! Will Rocket get to Tazerface!? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Clara steps up, Alice's tracking skills are called for and Luna hides her plan from the team. Please Review and C ya soon.)


	33. The Wake

(AN/Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Thank you for all your lovely feedback which has led to breaking the 700 reviews mark for this fic. So thank you kindly. Also big thanks to the dev team for helping me through this difficult week, shout out to Smoketrail who wrote part of this chapter. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 32- The Wake**

It was happening again. Robyn was stood in front of a mirror and could see yet another version of herself instead of her own reflection, this version shared the same face but her nose was black instead of pink and the ears were more canine than lapin "Fourth time in twenty-four hours." Robyn gave a tired sigh, she was staring at the mirror in the en-suite bathroom of her and Hannah's bedroom in the SHIELD apartment

"I wonder why it's acting up again." Hannah mused, the striped hybrid was dressed in a black pant suit with a white blouse, ready for Captain America's funeral.

"No idea. Seeing other versions of me is weird but I feel sorry for the me's, I know I have powers, they just seem scared by face." Robyn spoke, blinking her eyes and finding her usual reflection returned. The heroine was garbed in a black dress, all of Team's Ceartais funeral wear had been provided by Stark Industries, Iron Heart had scanned all the mammals' bodies for the unique sizes and a courier had delivered them as well as some maternity wear for Alice and sets of clothes for the recently freed Clara and Jason.

"Once the funeral is done and the wake is over, maybe we should chat to the others, see if they have any ideas." Hannah suggested, zipping up the back of Robyn's dress.

"I doubt anyone's going to be in the mood for that after the funeral and why are we even calling it a wake? Everyone knows as soon as we get to Avengers tower we're going to be talking about a counterattack against Doom." Robyn said, sounding solemn.

"What's wrong?" Hannah asked, noticing her wife's change of tone.

"We're about to go to a funeral, I'd say that might be a reason to be down." Robyn replied.

"No, I know something else is bugging you about the wake." Hannah called out, hugging her love from behind.

Robyn shook her head and sighed "It's Lu. I don't think she should come."

"What?" Hannah asked, taken aback by Robyn's words.

"I think once the funeral is over she should come back here." Robyn answered.

"You don't think she's ready to be back on a mission?" Hannah guessed Robyn's reasoning.

"She went through hell yesterday, it was that traumatic it made her ditch her persona. I just think she needs time to recover before she throws herself back into the fight. Luna's fragile and I just don't want something worse to happen and completely shatter her." Robyn worried.

"You're a good sister to care for your sister so much but she's stronger than she seems, she went through a lot even before you were born." Hannah comforted.

"That's only because she had Mom and Dad with her, I wish they were here they'd know-" Robyn started to reply but her eyes drifted to the mirror and a familiar face made her gasp "Dad!?" Through the looking glass Robyn saw her father, sat at his desk in the mayor's office sipping a cup of coffee and talking to the deputy mayor Alana.

"Princess?" Hannah sounded, confused by the outburst.

"I can see my Dad, he's in his office talking to Alana!" Robyn quickly explained, knocking on the glass "Dad! Look over here!" the ginger hybrid remembering that Nick had put a mirror in his office so he could make sure he looked presentable before meetings, then within a moment the image faded and returned to Robyn's usual reflection "No, no, no! He's gone."

"You can look back in Zootopia? That's...incredible." Hannah tried to find the right word as not to frighten her spouse.

"No, this doesn't make sense." Robyn seethed, pulling at her long ears in frustration "I see versions of me and the only time I saw someone else was when you were stood in front of a mirror."

"Maybe your power is more complex than we thought, why don't you try thinking of someone else back home?" Hannah encouraged.

"Are you serious?" Robyn replied, sounding irked.

"What's the harm? Just give it a go." Hannah egged on.

"Look I don't even know how this works, what do I just think of my parents and 'poof' they appear? This entire thing is just craz—Aaron." Robyn rambled before looking back in the mirror and seeing her adopted son. The little koala was still in his pyjamas, stood on a stool in front of a sink while brushing his teeth, the marsupial's brown eyes lit up when he saw his mother's through the mirror.

"You can see Aaron?" Hannah asked, envious of her wife's sight and gift.

Aaron was happily waving and saying stuff on the other side of the mirror but nothing could be heard, Robyn pointed to her ears and said clearly "I can't hear you."

Aaron understood and leaned closer to the mirror and breathed on it to fog it up, he then wrote with his finger 'HI MOMS'. This warmed Robyn's heart and melted away some of the anxiety she was feeling about the day but then she quickly realised she could update the little hero about Clara and Jason's arrival and the fact that Zoe was still alive. Robyn breathed onto the mirror and tried to condense her message as much as she could.

000

Ronin was never without a contingency plan. The swordswoman had been trained from a young age to always have a strategy to fall back on and have access to a safe haven in trying times. As soon as Ronin had learned that Taskmaster and Kraven had been captured by the coalition of heroes she had relocated herself and Andi to a place neither of the captured villains knew about; The Frost Rooms. During her youth in the Hand ninja clan and her years as independent mercenary she had completed numerous missions for an individual known as Deacon Frost, a person who shared more in common with a monster than a human being. A month before Ronin had met Andi, the assassin had taken a protection job guarding Frost during a business trip to India but the trip had not gone to plan, it had been elaborate trap orchestrated by former Avenger and legendary sword fighter Eric Brooks known in the superhero world as the vampire hunter Blade.

Ronin had saved the vampire Frost's undead life and in doing so had defeated Blade in combat, the hero had survived but he was thoroughly beaten and severely injured by Ronin who now owned the title of Earth's greatest sword fighter. In gratitude, Frost always had a one of his finest rooms available for Ronin if she ever needed sanctuary. The Frost Rooms was not a hotel for the general public, in fact some people who worked within the vicinity of the building didn't know its true nature. To the outside world the building was the 'Jolly Butcher' abattoir, a slaughterhouse located in Queens, New York which did actually slaughter animals to sell around the city's markets but underneath the building was a luxury hotel and spa for vampires, demons and other supernatural creatures, with a bountiful stock of human 'cattle' for any hungry guests. Ronin and Andi were mutants but they were seen by many guests of the Frost Rooms as humans but to ensure no harm befell the mercenaries Frost himself and issued a dire warning that deadly force would be used if anyone attempted to harm the murderous couple.

The couple has spent a restful night in a spacious suite and just after 11am the next morning a knock came at their door. Ronin opened it to find Deacon Frost stood before her with a small request for renowned warriors. The hotel proprietor lead them down a hallway where trance music could be heard echoing from a room down the hall. "These guests are just the height of rudeness, most of the hotel's patrons are vampires and we sleep during the day." Frost spoke in a peeved manner, the vampire's tall frame towered over the relatively petit Ronin and Andi, he was dressed in a fashionable suit and his grey hair and beard were neatly styled.

"I'm going to guess they've ignored your request to shut that racket off?" Andi assumed, the archer was dressed in her casual clothes but was armed with her bow, quiver and daggers.

"You guess correctly." Frost confirmed "Their exact words were 'Get staked, old man.'"

"How disrespectful." Ronin bristled, she was in her black sneaking suit with her usual weapons strapped to her "I'm surprised you didn't tear them limb from limb."

"I would've but I have a cattle deal to attend later and this is my best suit, I have no wish to stain it." Frost answered, approaching the hotel room door with the booming bass rattling through the walls causing other guests to stand in their own doorways and mutter disapprovingly causing Frost to address them "Ladies and Gents, we're dealing with this ruckus, on behalf of the Frost Rooms I apologise and will offer a free live human for your breakfast at moonrise."

Frost used his master key to open the door to luxury suite only to find it trashed. There was empty booze and blood bottles everywhere, two naked human cattle were strewn on the floor dead and drained of blood, some of the furniture was flipped or torn with claws. The room's occupants were dancing like fools, unaware that Frost and the assassins had walked in. Andi silenced the music by firing an arrow directly at the power cord for the sound system, the arrow cut straight through the cable bringing the music to an abrupt stop. A male vampire in a black shirt and jeans spun around and barked "What the hell?" Ronin noted that his accent was Dutch.

"You were asked nicely to shut off the music, when you didn't comply I fetched security. Now please reduce your revelry Mr. Visser, the other guests are trying to sleep." Frost informed sternly to the five young vampires.

The Dutch vamp known as Visser gave a loud tut before sniffing in the direction of Ronin and Andi "You brought humans as your back up?" he scoffed "I should kick your ass then eat their hearts! No stops me from partying."

"We're mutants actually," Andi corrected, the overwhelming scent of blood in the room was making her giddy "and we're a lot more dangerous than your usual prey."

"Mr Visser this need not descend into violence, Mr Frost just wants you to keep the noise down." Ronin tried to reason.

"You dare speak to me, human!?" Visser snarled, grabbing a gun from the table triggering the other vampires to arm themselves as well.

"I'd step back if you don't want that suit to get blood on it." Andi sniggered to Frost, who complied and walked out of the room.

All the vampires were drunk and slow, by the time everyone had grabbed a weapon Ronin had closed the distance and sliced of Visser's hand that held the pistol causing him to scream in agony, one of the other vampires went to stab Ronin with a broken bottle but got an arrow in each eye from Andi's bow. The arrowheads and Ronin's katana were not silver so it wouldn't kill the vampires but it was extremely agonising. Andi fired a brace of cryo arrows at two other vampires' heads, freezing their skulls "Beheading can kill a vampire, right?" she asked her wife.

"Let's find out." Ronin replied glibly, getting out her pistol and shooting each frozen head, causing them to shatter like blood stained crystals leaving the remaining vampire to surrender, raising her hands in terror.

"You bitches!" Visser snapped, throwing a punch at Ronin only to be kicked in jaw by Andi who then stepped on his head to keep him down.

"You want us to kill them all?" Andi called out to Frost in the hallway.

"No, two dead is enough. Visser and his friends still need to pay us for the damage." Frost answered.

"As you wish." Ronin nodded, wiping the blood of her blade before sheathing it.

"Later, asshole." Andi teased the defeated Visser, before walking away leaving an even bloodier mess than when they entered.

Frost closed the door once both the merc's were out of the room, all the while reading something on his phone "Thank you for your assistance, ladies."

"Our pleasure, Mr Frost." Ronin smiled, pulling down her skull mask.

"Sorry to change the subject I've just received a text from the foreman of the abattoir upstairs, apparently there is a Mr Hammer to see you." Frost informed.

"Perfect timing, time to get our goodies." Andi grinned, still high off the smell of blood.

Ronin and Andi accessed the abattoir via a concealed elevator in one of the meat lockers, the two women exited the giant fridge and walked around the corner to see a skinny middle-aged man who looked disgusted by the cow carcases hung around him. "Hey, Hammer." Andi greeted.

"Why in god's name are we meeting in a slaughterhouse?" Justin Hammer skipped the pleasantries, he has a shock proof briefcase in his hand.

"Looking for a decent steak." Ronin replied dryly "Can we start?"

"Fine by me." Justin answered, still looking queasy "Your shipment is on a cargo ship named 'The Blue Turtle', it'll be here by 3am tomorrow morning."

"What's the delay? You said you set this up for later today." Andi questioned, annoyed at this development.

"You try getting this sort of product into New York, we had to wait for a window when customs are lax." Justin explained before handing the case to Andi "This will control the weapons."

"So, what are the specs? How much damage can we do with them?" Ronin asked.

"You have eight verticals take off drones, armed with rail guns and missiles, so you do the math." Justin answered, looking at the pair with unease.

"Thanks, Hammer. Doesn't it feel nice to repay a favour?" Andi smirked.

"Favour? You're blackmailing me!" Justin blasted, before holding out his hand "Speaking of which, the photos. Now."

Andi reached into her pocket and pulled out a usb drive, tossing it to Justin "There you go, pervert."

"Go to hell." Justin simmered, stuffing the drive in his inner blazer pocket.

"Does your wife know that you screw a harem of whores during your business trips?" Ronin asked, wanting to get under the weapon dealer's skin.

Justin didn't answer, he turned around and marched out of the abattoir "Bye, Hammer. Stay away from those hookers now." Andi taunted, watching the man leave.

"You didn't even check the contents of that case." Ronin criticised.

"I know the controls are in here, Hammer knows what happens to people that try and play us." Andi waved off before opening the case to find a sophisticated targeting computer "Let's give Manhattan a firework show."

000

Jason Alonso felt safe for the first time in weeks, but that didn't mean he wasn't scared. The young caracal would freeze with fear every time the front door would open and he would see the imposing SHIELD agents outside on guard duty. He also felt unease around The Champions, despite them being friendly with him and the other mammals taking refuge in the two SHIELD apartments he couldn't shake off the fear of the strange creatures and would often activate his metal fur by instinct before running to safety of his bedroom or behind Arthur.

But for most of the day Jason hadn't had to worry about humans, they and Team Ceartais were out the funeral for a superhero he had never heard of. He had been invited but the thought of being around so many humans overwhelmed him, fortunately for him he wasn't alone, his friend Arthur was there to watch over him. The two ended up watching 'A Bug's Life' on Netflix, and played Jenga and other board games from the shelf in the large apartment, Arthur had just made the caracal a turkey salad sandwich when he asked "So do you want to watch some TV? Or maybe we could be brave and head outside, have a look around the city?"

"...No." Jason replied meekly, looking down at his sandwich.

"Hey, it's ok." Arthur tried to recover, feeling guilt upon seeing Jason's downtrodden expression "We can watch another movie, I'm sure there's an old game console we could play-"

"Why aren't I brave?" Jason asked out of the blue, looking up at Arthur from his chair.

"You are brave. You've been through so much, even adults can't handle what you went through." Arthur tried to encourage.

"No, I mean; I have superpowers, I shouldn't be scared, I can protect myself." Jason rambled "Why aren't I like Scarlet or Roar?"

"Look Jason, I am sure there are times when even superheroes get scared. I mean I have powers and I get scared, you don't see me joining Ceartais on missions." Arthur pointed out.

"But I want to help. I want to get Esso, Vanessa, Harper and everyone else back to Zootopia...but I'm just a chicken." Jason criticised himself.

Arthur went quiet for a few seconds, these words applied to him to, even though he didn't understand his powers or the links to Seren yet, he was still afraid to explore it. Arthur saw himself in the powered child and that was both comforting and humiliating. The wolf didn't have a direct response for Jason but he did have an idea to make him feel better, he walked over to the corner of the room and picked up a notepad and pencil from the stack of old subway maps he and Viv had used earlier in the week. Arthur then placed the pad and pencil next to Jason's sandwich causing the boy to ask, "What's this for?"

"Finish your lunch, then I want you to write to down everything you know about The Cauldron and if you can try and draw a map of it. Team Ceartais are going to need all the help they can get when they land on that ship and rescue everyone." Arthur smiled.

Jason gave a small smile back and nodded, picking up his sandwich and beginning to eat it. Jason now felt like he was helping but Arthur was left with guilt, he had the power to help everyone but he didn't know how to tap into it fully or where to find the stupid sword his grandfather always prattled on about before his death. In the end Arthur had to just face facts that the very sword that is part of his family and powers must have been destroyed on the same day his family was taken from him but despite this he knew it was time to stop hiding from his strength and embrace the virtues of his namesake.

000

The funeral of Captain America came and went. The nearly three-hour event from the opening speech, the procession to the graveyard and the final goodbye had taken its toll on the friends and colleagues of the old soldier. The streets had been lined with thousands of mourners who wanted to give their own farewells to the star spangled man. The Avengers, The Champions, Team Ceartais and other heroes had gathered in Avengers tower for the wake and just like Robyn had predicted the conversation moved towards Doom and what Clara knew about his plan. The physicist did not shy away from the questions and explained all she knew to the humans, whom she still found strange looking.

"An army? That's what all this misery has been for? An army!?" Tony Stark seethed, the tech mogul was drinking fruit tea in an attempt to calm himself down, it wasn't working.

"All those kidnappings, all the assassinations, Steve's death." An athletic framed woman growled, Team Ceartais were not familiar with the woman standing beside Thor.

"Jen, relax." Captain Marvel cautioned, dressed in her air force uniform.

"It just makes me...Argh!" The woman suddenly hunched over in pain, her pale skin turning emerald green and her entire body increased in size, tearing through the black dress she had been wearing and only leaving scraps of fabric covering her "It makes Hulk angry!" She-Hulk growled.

"Peace, my love." Thor soothed, standing on his tip toes to kiss his girlfriend on the cheek "Now is not the time to strike with blind rage."

"Whoa." Kion mumbled, his stunned expression mirrored on the other mammals' faces, they had never seen She-Hulk transform before.

"What's getting to me is the whole 'Unique Soul' theory that Doom's concocted." Brawn thought aloud.

"It's not Doom's theory. I have studied the research of many mystic scholars and across the multiverse powers are shared across multiple copies of the same version." Strange interjected.

"So, Doctor Doom's plan could work?" Ms Marvel asked, the inhuman was trying to remain composed but she had cried throughout the funeral causing her brown eyes to appear puffy.

"Essentially, yes. If Professor Bloom is the only version of herself, then her powers don't have to be shared, making her more powerful." Strange said, causing some worried looks to grow on the mourner's faces.

Bucky Barnes, who was dressed in his WW2 uniform, was sat at the bar nursing a beer when he said in a shaky voice "Super soldiers...me and Steve were both experimented on for war. Now Doom wants to build entire army and doesn't care who gets hurt along the way. Steve would hate that."

"Bucky." Was all Black Panther could say, there was no words of comfort he could offer.

Maria Hill, Agent Coulson and Dragoness were representing SHIELD at the funeral but they were also invited to the wake. Hearing all these revelations from Clara made Hill worry more and more triggering her question "How powerful are you, Bloom?"

"Honestly? I have no idea. I thought I was just a walking generator but it seems like I can weaponize the energy I create." Clara answered, unaware of Hill's questionable past behaviour.

"You and the cat boy should come to SHIELD headquarters, we have a lab where we can fully ac-" Hill began to persuade.

Clara saw where this was going and interrupted with "I'm going to stop you right there. I barely trust government spooks back in Zootopia so there's not a chance I'm going to a government lab here. Oh, as that for that cat boy, his name is Jason by the way, I won't let you lay a finger on that kid and neither will Arthur Knight."

"What's Knight got to do with this?" Hill asked, frustrated by Clara's attitude.

"Arthur is pretty much Jason's guardian knight, that wolf won't let anything bad happen to that kid." Olivia smiled, glad to see that Hill had been roadblocked once again. Arthur and Jason were back at the safehouse, Arthur was originally going to attend the funeral but Jason's reluctance to leave the safety of the apartment caused them both to stay put.

"Speaking of powers, you said Doom wants to extract them, how though?" Wasp asked Clara, the Champion was at the buffet table pouring herself a coffee.

"No idea, I'm not a geneticist." Clara shrugged.

"That's it!" Ghost Rider exclaimed suddenly causing everyone to jump.

"What's it?" Spiderman asked.

"That's why Doom wanted to nab all those scientists, he thinks they can help him. Beast could help take away the mammals' powers." Ghost Rider realised, these words made Storm stir, the leader of the X Men had been quiet throughout the conversation but looked especially upset upon learning about Nightcrawler's role in Doom's twisted plot.

"Hank is one of the world's leading minds in the study of mutation and other powers...Doom must want him to work on the project." Storm spoke, caught between anger at Doom and worry for Beast.

"But Doom also had Doc Oc killed and they almost killed Peter Parker, why kill some and kidnap others?" Spiderman asked, concerned for the welfare of his mentor.

"...I know why." Captain Marvel spoke up "Those who were on the kidnap list were all heroes, all those on the kill list were either villains or regular citizens." Even though she and most of the other people in the room knew who Peter Parker really was, Doom didn't and neither did SHIELD so she hid this detail.

"What are you getting at?" Hannah asked, not getting the heroine's point.

"What's the one thing all heroes do? Save people." Captain Marvel said, "If Doom told Beast that innocent lives were at risk I'd bet he'd cooperate."

"Hank would do that." Storm sighed before asking Clara "Was Kurt the only mutant on The Cauldron?"

"I'm afraid so, Ororo. I'm sorry." Clara answered sympathetically, it was strange finally meeting the woman Kurt had spoken so much about, she only wished it was under better circumstances.

"So, Andi took Beast to another location." Snowguard concluded "How the heck do we find him?"

"We find Andi and Ronin, that's how." Kodi answered.

"My team have been searching for them for years, what have you got that entire government agency doesn't?" Dragoness asked back critically.

"Me." Alice stated, stepping forward.

"Alice?" Luna softly gasped.

"I'm the world's greatest tracker back in my universe. When I was an assassin there wasn't a soul alive I couldn't find, when I became a hero I used those skills to catch criminals. I've been on the side lines too long." Alice said, the white furred doe's serious tone made both Ceartais and The Champions uneasy.

"Alice, look I'm not denying your skills but I can't in good conscience let you work in your condition." Olivia tried to be diplomatic, the mouse was perched atop Kodi's head.

"My condition is irrelevant." Alice dismissed.

"Girl, you're preggo!" Robyn said sharply "There is no way you're fighting with those kits in your belly."

"I won't be fighting. I'll be tracking. You lot will be fighting for me and doing the heavy stuff." Alice explained, sounding determined.

"Luna, talk some sense into her." Kion groaned.

Luna was quiet for a moment before saying "Alice is right, we do need her."

"Lu!" Robyn gave a frustrated squeak.

"Time is running out. If we don't find the mammals soon, armed forces from Zootopia are going to storm through the rift...and besides me and Alice both want our babies to be born back in Zootopia and not here. We need Alice's skills." Luna conceded to logic, holding her wife's paw in solidarity.

"The Champions won't argue with you but personally I think it's a dumb move." Ms Marvel said with a shake of her head.

"Then it's settled, Alice will track Doom's assassins." Captain Marvel said despite her discomfort of letting someone pregnant do something so dangerous.

"But there are other things to focus on, like getting onto The Cauldron and rescuing everybody." Tony said, leaning against a retro arcade cabinet. "Professor Bloom, didn't you say you built an anchor device?"

"I did. One's at the SHIELD apartment and the other tucked away back on that ship. The only obstacle is creating another rift to get us back there." Clara answered.

"We need to figure out a way to create a rift." Riri stated before proposing "We'll use the lab here, me, Tony, Wasp, Viv and Brawn can get working on a way to get the mammals home."

"Oh, volunteer my lab, please. Take my Ferrari for a spin while you're at it." Tony replied sarcastically to his protégé to which she just gave a sly grin.

"The combined scientific minds have a strong probability of a breakthrough." Viv hypothesised.

"Yeah, we can even call on Moon Girl for help...wait a sec." Brawn mumbled before counting the Avengers and realising they were all present "If the Avengers are here, who's guarding Moon Girl and the other scientists at the compound?"

"Calm yourself, Brawn." Thor assured "The mistress of the weather has kindly lent the strength of her kinsmen to protect the scholars."

"Come again?" Snowguard reacted, wanting a clearer answer.

"X-men guard nerds." She-Hulk translated bluntly.

"Collosus, Negasonic and others have taken over guard duty for the day." Storm elaborated.

"I have a request." Bucky cut in "Before you all go off, trying to sort this shit show out I want to ask you to do one thing; bring Andi and Ronin in alive. Steve wouldn't want anyone killed in his name."

"Of course, Bucky." Ms Marvel agreed, her team had a no kill rule.

"We'll do it by the book, for Steve." Captain Marvel concurred.

"Same here." Olivia chimed in. Unaware of the intentions of her second in command.

000

After the discussion about what to do next about Doctor Doom, the wake actually became a wake, the heroes shared stories of Captain America and they began to celebrate his life. A couple of hours in, Luna made her way out onto the windy quin-jet/Helicopter pad and looked out over the grey and dull skyline of New York knowing a certain someone would follow her out. "Why did you do it?" A puzzled voice asked, Luna turned to see the winged SHIELD agent Dragoness walking out onto the pad "Why did you stick up for Alice in there?"

"Simple; it makes our job easier." Luna revealed "If she does the leg work in finding Andi then all we have to do is kill her."

"Even after what Sargent Barnes said? I mean he's right, Captain America wouldn't want this." Dragoness fretted, stuffing her hands in her pockets, trying to save them from the biting windchill.

"Steve wouldn't want this, but we do. We know this world will be a lot safer without Andi in it." Luna responded.

"I know...say couldn't we've talked about this inside? This wind is going to freeze my tail off." Dragoness griped, the inhuman was in a specially tailored suit to accommodate her tail and wings.

"Hannah has super hearing; the wind disrupts that." Luna reasoned as she reached into her purse and fishing out a joint and a lighter "Besides I can smoke out here."

"Is that marijuana?" Dragoness asked, sounding surprised.

"My last ever joint." Luna sighed as she slipped the rolled joint between her lips "I can't smoke this stuff once the kits are born and there's no way I'm going to smoke this around Alice." she then lit it and inhaled.

"Never had you down as a drug user." Dragoness commented.

"This is legal where I'm from, ok?" Luna countered before swerving the conversation "Anyway, how's my request coming along?"

"I sent the request to police department back in California as well as the FBI and SHIELD. All evidence that is attached to Andi and back when she was the human version of you is being sent to my office. Do you really think we'll find something in that junk?" Dragoness answered then asked.

"The first time I fought Andi I won, despite her being a lot stronger, why?" Luna asked rhetorically, while taking a drag "Because she heard Robbie's voice, the same voice as her sister. It made her hesitate and stumble, if there's anything in that pile of evidence that triggers the same response then we got our window to go in for the kill."

"Damn, I'd thought you'd be all noble and be all like 'It has to be a fair fight'." Dragoness said, once again her expectations of Luna's character were being defied.

"Andi is a psychopathic killer who's mutation makes her stronger and faster when she smells blood plus she has like a hundred pounds of muscle more than me. I'm just a skinny fox who's good with a bow so I'll take any advantage I can get." Luna replied, feeling the subtle sensation of the weed hitting her system.

"So, you're still keeping the bow with your new persona? Any idea of what that's going to be yet?" Dragoness asked, sounding curious.

"I'm not sure. I'll keep the bow, but I feel like I've got to be what I wanted to be when I first got into crime fighting." Luna mumbled, a memory of training with her grandparents and Little John flickered in her mind, knowing full well what they would think of her plan but it didn't matter, she was still going to go through with it.

(AN/ What did you folks think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review! Next time on TBM; Olivia voices opinions very loudly, Alice enlists Spiderman's help to track down the assassins, back in Zootopia Jack and Skye are flummoxed by some news and Andi and Ronin light up the Manhattan skyline. Please review and c ya soon)


	34. Sword

(An/ Hey folks I'm back after some time off due to two deaths in the family within a few days of one another. Thank you for all the messages of condolence over the last couple of weeks. So without further ado let's get cracking with the first chapter in awhile…)

 **Chapter 33- Sword**

The day went on until the small hours, with the majority of The Champions leaving around 11pm due to curfews set by their parents and guardians leaving only Wasp, Brawn and Iron Heart who were talking possible tech solutions for the upcoming mission with Iron Man. Luna and Alice left early due to the bunny's tiredness and the pain in her ankles from her increased weight since becoming pregnant. Robyn and Hannah also left with the other married couple on the team, with Kodi noticing that Robyn looked spooked about something and was purposefully keeping her eyes pointed down, an unusual practice for the bolshie hybrid. Bucky and Storm left soon after, both of them in dire moods following the revelations Clara told.

Ghost Rider, Captain Marvel, Kion, Kodi and Clara were sat at the bar with blonde flying ace taking the role of bar maid. She poured Clara a cosmopolitan cocktail and slid over to her while saying "Honestly I'm not worried about Rocket."

"But he's on a prison ship with an evil dictator." Clara replied, sounding concerned.

"Oh please, Rocket's been in tougher jams than that, I've known that little bastard over a decade and he always wriggles out of trouble." Carol waved off, pouring herself a bourbon.

"That Raccoon is the definition of dumb luck." Ghost Rider commented, sticking to cola as he was driving home.

Captain Marvel nodded in agreement before noticing how close the two wolves at the bar were so close together before grinning "So Mage, must be good to have your girlfriend back, especially after your year sabbatical with Doctor Strange."

"Yeah, I can't put into words how much I missed her." Kodi spoke honestly, triggering an 'Aww' from his lover.

"Maybe you can't put it into words, but you both certainly can howl it." Kion slurred slightly, feeling tipsy from the amount of beers he had consumed.

"Oh, you heard us last night?" Clara grinned, fixing her glasses before singing "Not-sorry."

"Howling? Evolved wolves still do that?" Ghost Rider queried.

"Especially when they're doing it." Kion confirmed, his beer bottle looking tiny in his paw.

"Says the guy who's hyena girlfriend laughs up a storm whenever they bang." Kodi sniggered back "Don't think I forgot about the time you and Jasiri screwed in the Bunker's gym."

Before the drunk and flustered Kion could respond, Captain Marvel cut in "Ok that's a couple of things to unpack. First of all; wolves howling while banging is hilarious, secondly; your girlfriend is a hyena? I thought lions were like their natural enemy."

"Natural enemy?" Kion scoffed "We're both predator species, we don't hunt each other."

"Yeah but all those nature docs show they really don't get along. They fight like cats and dogs." Ghost Rider interrupted.

"What's a dog?" Clara asked, never hearing of such a creature.

"Uhhhhh..." Ghost Rider sounded, not sure how to explain dogs to a wolf "Carol, care to explain?"

"Thanks Robbie, you chicken." Captain Marvel groaned, knowing the explanation may cause offence.

"Ms Marvel mentioned dogs before, but she didn't explain what they were." Kodi remembered from a few days back.

"Look Mage, Clara...it's not...look you're not going to like what they are." Captain Marvel struggled, sipping her bourbon for courage.

"So, they're something to do with wolves?" Clara guessed.

"Yeah." Captain Marvel answered, looking at the three inquisitive sets of mammal eyes looking to her for an explanation "So you know in this universe Humans, Inhumans and Mutants are the only sentient mammals on earth? All other mammals are unevolved."

"We call them savage." Kion offered.

"Right, savage." Captain Marvel awkwardly agreed before saying "So anyway thousands of years ago Humans began to take in and train savage wolves to help them hunt, to guard their lands and for companionship."

"You mean like a pet? Like a parrot or a lizard?" Clara questioned, the wolf had a pet cockatiel as a child.

"Exactly but over thousands of years the wolves changed in appearance and temperament become less wild and more domesticated. Humans bred certain types of wolves together to be smaller, or faster or prettier to become various breeds of dogs." Captain Marvel continued to explain, watching the mammals' expression change from interested to concerned.

"Humans force bred wolves to make dogs?" Kodi gasped, it sounded like a dystopian nightmare to him.

"Such a control of genetics would result in disastrous health problems for these 'Dogs'. How many breeds are there?" Clara mulled over the information like the scholar she was.

"Hundreds." Ghost Rider answered, "My grandma had a Great Dane when I was a kid, I loved that dog."

"Gimme' your phone." Kion requested with a slur "I want to look these dog things on the internet."

"Um, sure." Ghost Rider complied, passing over his phone to the lion despite knowing the images he'd fine would upset him.

It only took Kion a few seconds to find dogs on a search engine and his instant reaction was "What the hell!?"

This reaction caused both Clara and Kodi to lean over and look at the photos on the phone and their faces matched the shocked lions "Dude how did you get from wolves to that!?" Kodi asked, stunned by the appearance of a pug.

"Those poor creatures." Clara commented, seeing the vastly different body types of dogs and imagining the health problems that went with them.

"H-hey look, it's not all bad, dogs are beloved by humans, we call them 'man's best friend' for a reason." Captain Marvel tried to gloss over.

"...Mammals in our dimension breed birds, reptiles and fish. I guess calling humans cruel for breeding dogs would be hypocritical but still it gives me the chills." Kodi tried to pragmatic about the subject.

"If it makes you feel better it not just wolves that humans bred, we did it to horses and cats too." Ghost Rider tried to brighten but this only caused the disgust to grow on the mammals' face.

"For Christ's sake Robbie." Captain Marvel groaned, face palming herself.

All of a sudden Wasp zipped toward the bar, still in her shrunken mode, the heroine buzzed in front of Kodi's face and informed at speed "You need to sort out Olivia."

"Why, what's up?" Kion asked, his drunken gaze struggling to focus on Wasp.

"She's gotten really, really drunk and won't get off Thor's hammer." Wasp replied.

"Oh boy, drunk Olivia is not fun." Kodi grimaced, getting up from his seat and was led by Wasp to the other end of the spacious penthouse to find an odd scene; Olivia was indeed swaying on top of Thor's golden hammer that was placed atop a coffee table, with a peeved Thor stood up and arguing with the mouse while the chuckling figures of She-Hulk and Black Panther looked on with amusement.

"No, this is my spot. I'm going to stay here and drink all night!" Olivia snapped, holding a thimble full of rum.

"Listen, oh rodent machinist, that is my hammer, I can draw it to my hand with sheer will so move before I do so." Thor bristled, thinking it was absurd to argue with one so small.

"If you can do that that why haven't ye'?" Olivia asked, her tone more spiny with the alcohol in her system.

"I have no wish to harm a fellow hero." Thor answered honestly.

"Then you lose, god boy." Olivia smirked before sipping her rum.

"Enough of this foolishness." Thor huffed, before reaching down and attempted to pick up Olivia only to be bitten, he snatched his hand back and yelped "Ow!"

"The mighty god of thunder defeated by a mouse!" Black Panther chortled.

"Little nerd make Thor look puny." She Hulk gave a hearty laugh.

"What in nine realms are you? Never have I met a soul so stubborn." Thor reacted, trying to shake off his embarrassment.

"That stubbornness is a side effect of being Scottish." Kodi cut in.

"Kodi!" Olivia chimed "Come to cheer me on?"

"I've come to check if you're ok. You've been hitting the rum a little hard since the meeting." Kodi tried to say this in a way that wouldn't sound judgemental.

"Pfft, I'm fine. I just want to stand on this hammer, while hammered, and piss off Goldie locks here." Olivia answered, swaying from drunkenness.

"Consider me rightly pissed off." Thor simmered.

"Come near me again and I'll bite even harder." Olivia threatened before displaying her pronounced front teeth.

"Olivia, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you're trying to start a fight." Kodi pointed out, familiar with the mouse's habits when inebriated.

Olivia looked stumped for a moment before waving off "Ah you're talking shite."

"Bingo." Wasp sighed, landing on the ground and returning to her normal size "Why do you want to fight?"

"Shut it, I don't wanna' fight." Olivia griped, taking a glug of her booze.

Kodi stepped forward and crouched down in front of the resting hammer and offered his paw as a platform for the team leader, after a few moments of silence Olivia staggered onto Kodi's paw. "Come on, let's talk about this." Kodi said, walking into another room for privacy.

As soon as the door shut Olivia fibbed "I only got on your paw to stop Thor bitching."

Kodi ignored the lie and said in a straight forward manner "Olivia, I've known you for years, stop dicking around and tell me what's eating you."

Olivia felt a wave of shame wash over her, she had made a fool of herself and all-over petty reasons "Ignore me, I'm wasted." she tried to avoid.

"Hey, you're always there for me and the others when we need to vent, so if you need to unload, go for it." Kodi encouraged.

"It's stupid." Olivia replied in a dunk slur.

"I won't care, you're my friend, I'll listen to whatever stupid shit you have to tell me." Kodi willed, using his other paw to steady Olivia who nearly stumbled off his outstretched hand.

"...I don't know what I'm doing." Olivia finally caved, going to take another sup of rum only to find the thimble was empty.

"I'm going to need more that." Kodi prompted.

"I mean I don't what I'm doing with my life." Olivia clarified, sitting down on Kodi's paw "I've got nothing going on."

Kodi processed this for a few seconds for replying "You're the leader of a superhero team who has saved Zootopia countless times, built a mutli billion dollar medical tech company from the ground up and are currently saving lives in another dimension. I'd say you've got a lot going on."

"But that's it. Apart from hero work and my company, my life is empty." Olivia expanded.

"You have your dads, you have us." Kodi tried to lift the rodent's spirits.

"And I love you all...but it's not going to last." Olivia sighed "Eventually everyone will leave."

"That won't happen, we'll always be a family." Kodi replied.

"Kion will probably leave first, he only joined the team to find his sister, afterwards I think he just stuck around to support everyone, he's a dad now and spends less and less time being a hero. The same will happen with Robyn and Hannah and again with Alice and Luna when they become full time parents. Even you, Mr Shag-a-lot, have a girlfriend now and I'm not kidding when I say I see you and Clara being together forever...then there's me, the spinster mouse with her robots." Olivia ranted with her bottom lip quivering.

"Olivia, you're 28, you have your entire life ahead of you to find someone." Kodi urged, only remembering a handful of occasions when he had seen his fearless leader look so vulnerable.

"But I already found him!" Olivia yelled in an instant, startling Kodi "...and I flushed that relationship down the crapper!"

"Blake. You still love him." Kodi said gently, he and the rest of Team Ceartais all had their suspicions about Olivia's heartache.

"Robyn was right in what she said the other night, I can't switch off...I couldn't even switch off for the mammal I love." Olivia spoke, trying her best to keep her tears at bay "I saw us getting married, I saw us changing our names to Dawson-Gusteau, I saw us adopting children and yet I still fucked it up."

"It's not too late, Olivia." Kodi spoke.

"Yes, it is. I chose Spitfire instead of Blake too often, he probably looks back on our relationship as a mistake." Olivia lamented, hiding her miserable face from Kodi.

Kodi used his little finger to lift Olivia's chin up and gave a comforting smile "The thing about mistakes is that they can be forgiven and fixed. When we get back to Zootopia I'm going to drag you to Blake's door and you're going to talk to him."

"Shut up." Olivia dismissed.

"I'm serious." Kodi vowed "If you love Blake that much I can't stand by and let you run away from this problem."

Olivia could see the determination in Kodi's expression, she knew he would make good on this promise "When did you become the mature one on the team?" She smiled sadly, hugging one of his fingers.

Kodi didn't have the answer he could only joke "When did you become the baby?"

000

Jack and Skye Savage had heard and seen a lot since they moved to Zootopia over twenty years ago from criminal and political conspiracies, natural disasters, the rise of superheroes and the madness of the purple sky incident, so one would assume they would be quite desensitised to strangeness. But this was not the case.

The couple were having breakfast when they got a phone call from their oldest friends Nick and Judy saying that they were coming over with their grandson Aaron who had a status update on Ceartais' mission through the rift, when Skye asked how the koala knew of such things the Wildes avoided the answer and said it would be better if he explained it in person.

Jack and Skye had been babysitting Aleks and Zoe's twins; Rhiannon and Felix ever since Zoe's kidnapping so the couple had enough juice and snacks at disposal for Aaron. When Nick and Judy arrived with Aaron, they were mobbed by the hyperactive hybrid twins, with Aaron being the main focus of attention. Rhiannon and Felix saw him as a new playmate and Aaron was ready to oblige but was reminded by Judy about the reason they were here. It only took a few minutes for Aaron to relay the message he received from his mother's but the absurdity of the story flummoxed Jack and Skye.

"So, let me get this straight; you astral projected to another dimension?" Skye asked her grandson, not sure if she believed the child.

"Yep, then I saw my moms through the mirror this morning." Aaron agreed, even though he didn't know what astral projection meant.

"I know it sounds crazy but he's not lying, Aaron's powers are amazing, I've seen them in action close up." Judy backed up, the doe bunny was dressed in a casual flannel shirt and jeans.

"It's not that we don't believe him, it's just a lot to take in." Jack replied, the federal agent was passing juice boxes to the three kids.

"Your Moms sound so cool!" Rhiannon grinned at Aaron.

"Our parents are cooler though." Felix boasted.

"So Team Ceartais have found allies in the other dimension and they've found out who's responsible for the kidnappings." Nick summarized, looking sadly at Felix and Rhiannon both oblivious of the danger their mother was in.

"What did your Moms' new friends look like?" Skye asked, amazed that the child was taking all of this craziness in his stride.

"They're called the Champions and their species is something called Hoo-mans." Aaron mispronounced "They were all wearing funny costumes, and they've only got fur on the top of their heads."

Jack grimaced before mumbling "That matches the description of the 'bad guy' I'm investigating at the moment." not wanting to say 'serial killer' and frighten the children in the room.

"Arthur was there to." Aaron added.

"Officer Knight!?" Judy gasped, relieved to hear her officer was safe "Why didn't you say that before?"

"I dunno'." Aaron shrugged "I tried to tell him about a magic book and he got upset."

"Magic? Really?" Nick reacted, shaking his head "This whole thing is just getting weirder all the time."

"Oh yeah there was one thing my Moms told me that was super important; hummingbird. They said you'd know what it meant." Aaron said before supping his juice.

The four adults in the room all had smiles of relief grow on their face upon hearing this word "She's alive." Skye said, putting her paw to her heart.

"Who's alive?" Felix asked, titling his head.

"Uh, just a friend." Skye swerved, not wanting to reveal the worrying truth to the child.

"I'll text Ray and Kiara, they'll want to know this." Judy said, getting out her phone and stated to type a message.

"And I'll get Lyla to have a word with you-know-who." Jack said, omitting Aleks' name as not to cause the twins concern.

000

Lylla had been enjoying her day off, lazing in the hammock in her garden and reading a good book when she was rudely interrupted by Jack calling her and telling her to check in on Aleks and deliver the news about Zoe.

She was irked that her relaxing day had been interrupted but Aleks was her friend and she knew that he needed to hear this. The otter made her way over to Aleks apartment and soon as she arrived at his door, she could hear the TV inside, she knocked on the door but she got no answer, she knocked again but could still hear no one stirring in the apartment. Lylla was a tad worried by this and fished out her spare key that Aleks had given her in case of emergencies, she opened the door and walked into the apartment and made her way to the living room where the sound of the TV was coming from. As soon as she saw her superior, she let out a frustrated "For Christ's sake." Aleks was snoring on the sofa, fully clothed with three empty red wine bottles scattered around him and on the TV was camcorder footage of Aleks and Zoe's wedding "Damn, this is pathetic." Lylla grumbled, going over to the sofa and shaking Aleks' arm "Aleks, wake up." but he didn't stir no matter how much she shook him, the fox just kept on snoring. Lylla tutted and walked out of the room and came back a minute later with a glass of water in her paw before throwing the liquid at the sleeping fox's face.

Aleks shot up with a start, gasping and coughing "W-what?"

"Wakey, wakey sleeping beauty." Lylla smirked, setting the glass down.

"What the hell, Lylla?" Aleks half snarled, half groaned, the thumping hangover headache came crashing into his senses.

"You wouldn't wake up and by the looks of it you drank enough to sleep for a week." Lylla criticised, going over to the window and opening the curtains.

The sunlight stung Aleks' eyes causing him to hiss "What are you doing here?"

"I came to check in on you." Lylla answered "And you're doing exactly what I thought you'd be doing."

"You have no idea what I'm going through." Aleks moaned, his headache making every little sound torture.

"Really?" Lylla reacted sternly, holding up her paw and showing her wedding band, she had not taken it off since her husband was killed.

Aleks realised what he said and quickly grovelled "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"If Rocket was here he'd beat your ass and I would help him." Lylla scorned "You need to sort yourself out for the twins and Zoe's sake."

"I know I need to be hopeful but I can't." Aleks pitied himself,

Lylla felt sorry for her friend and so said the one word that would lift his spirits "Hummingbird."

"What?" Aleks breathed, looking at Lylla with bleary eyes.

"We've got word from Ceartais, a mission update, it's not much but one thing they mentioned was 'Hummingbird'." Lylla explained.

"Zoe's codeword...she's alive." Aleks began to cry.

"I'll explain it all to you after you get a shower, you stink of booze. I'll make you some breakfast and we'll talk about it, ok?" Lylla proposed.

Aleks rose from his seat in a crying, happy daze and stumbled towards the bathroom while repeating over and over "She's alive."

000

Rocket Racoon was sick of throwing up, the hornet prisoner bracelet had activated every time he attempted to break out of the general population deck of the prison ship, three times in the 48 hours he had been there. His most recent attempt had him trying to remove the tiles in communal showers and crawl through the small space in the walls where the water pipes were however once he had made it through the crawlspace he had wound up in the room where the Doombots recharged. His bracelet was instantly activated and the Doombots grabbed hold of him. While he was violently vomiting, he didn't notice a figure walk into the charging room, looking at Rocket with smugness and sadism. When Rocket finally stopped hurling the figure spoke gruffly "You're a tenacious little prick, I'll give you that."

"Wha?" Rocket panted, his vision switching to where the figure stood; he was portly man who wasn't human, his teeth were sharp and crooked, his long brown hair greasy and his face was heavily scarred "TAZERFACE!" he yelled, trying to free himself out of the Doombots' grasp.

"I heard you got yourself on this ship just to get a shot of claiming my bounty." Tazerface sniggered, taking a few steps toward the mammal.

"Damn right I did, I'm going to drag your ass to the Nova Corp and let you rot in a cell til ya' croak!" Rocket snapped, hoping Tazerface would crouch down so he could try biting at his face.

"You've been after me for years yet you still can't snare me, even when you're so close." Tazerface mocked.

"Oh, I'm going to get ya', you can count on it!" Rocket promised sinisterly.

"No one can capture the great Tazerface!" Tazerface declared.

"That name's still stupid." Rocket laughed mockingly.

Tazerface looked like he was about to shout back at Rocket for a second but calmed and smiled "You know your girlfriend thought my name was funny too, she laughed at me so I made her stop."

"You bastard!" Rocket growled, the memory of him holding Lylla's lifeless body burning his mind.

"Hit a nerve, did I?" Tazerface grunted.

"When you die alone in a cell and get your miserable carcass dragged to hell there's going to be an angel that'll come down from heaven and torture you for kicks, her name is Lylla and she thinks your name is the most moronic, stupid, dumb name in freakin' galaxy." Rocket replied.

"My name is not stupid!" Tazerface howled before kicking Rocket in the face, forcing him into unconsciousness.

Rocket didn't know how long he was knocked out for, what stirred him was a stinging on his chin "Ah." He uttered, opening his eyes to see he was in a cell, but not his and Esso's, he was laying down in a bunk and when he turned his head, he saw Vanessa with a first aid kit, cleaning the cut on Rocket's chin.

"Welcome back, I assume your latest escape attempt went tits up?" Vanessa smarmed, dabbing the cotton wool ball on Rocket's cut.

"You assume correctly...but at least I know for sure Tazerface is on this tin can." Rocket smiled smugly.

Vanessa ignored the ridiculous sounding name and got a band aid out of the first aid box while saying "The Doombots tossed you down here about an hour ago, when I saw you were bleeding I brought you to my cell, I'm the only one with a first aid kit."

"Thanks for patching me up, you a doctor or something?" Rocket asked.

"I'm actually a professional party planner." Vanessa smiled.

"Well you can throw a big ass party when I take control of this ship." Rocket replied as Vanessa stuck on the band aid.

"Who's Lylla?" Vanessa asked out of the blue.

"How do you know that name?" Rocket asked back quickly, sounding defensive.

"You were mumbling it when Harper carried you in here." Vanessa answered.

"...Someone I loved." Rocket revealed "She's been dead for years, but it still hurts."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pried." Vanessa backtracked.

"It's ok, it isn't like I'm walking basket case about it." Rocket shrugged "As long as there's guns, booze and babes in this galaxy, that suits me just fine."

"Charming." Vanessa said, rolling her eyes.

"Oh, don't act like such a prude, I bet you've wanted to get a piece of this." Rocket taunted.

Vanessa looked back at rocket and slyly smiled "Maybe I do."

"Huh?" Rocket sounded, clearly not expecting this response.

"Look I've been on this ship for months and I've had zero action, to say I'm sexually frustrated would be the understatement of the decade." Vanessa said pragmatically "And I'm betting you've never done it with another sentient racoon."

"Well, I, uh..." Rocket rambled in an uncharacteristic manner.

"Look I personally think you're a selfish jerk but you're handsome, it's just sex, no romance. So how about it?" Vanessa propositioned, while looking at Rocket with hunger.

Rocket thought about it for a nano-second before replying with a slightly nervous "Sure."

000

"Are you sure this is necessary?" Spiderman asked, sounding slightly apprehensive.

"Oh please, Miles, I've been scaling skyscrapers since before you were born." Alice assured. The pregnant bunny was wearing a comfy hoodie along with maternity pants, in her paws was her katana resting in its scabbard.

"But I don't get why you have to be up so high." Spiderman fussed. The web head had agreed to help Alice begin tracking Andi and Ronin, he figured she'd want information about New York and possible hideouts however he was roped into letting Alice ride on his back and climb to the top of the tallest building in Manhattan 'One World Trade Centre' "And why do you need your sword?"

"The height helps me survey the landscape and rule out where my targets could be hiding and as for my sword, it just feels right to have it with me on a hunt." Alice answered, standing on the edge making Spiderman anxious.

"So... any insight?" Spiderman asked, seeing that the rabbit wore a serious expression.

"We can rule out any tourist areas, too big a police presence. Same with Chinatown, they won't hide out in the same place again. They'll avoid anywhere near central park; the Champions' mobile bunker would ward them off. These two won't use traditional hotels or Air BNBs, they'll likely use an outlaw nest. However, Deadpool and other mercenaries are after the bounties on Andi and Ronin's heads so it would have to be outlaw nest that prohibits violence or they have allies running the place." Alice listed off efficiently.

"Outlaw nest?" Spiderman questioned.

"A business that caters to the needs of assassins, merc's and other bad guys. These can be hotels, bars or armouries." Alice answered before going back to her deduction "Now that I think about it Andi and Ronin must have friends in New York's outlaw nest, I'll have to access SHIELD files on their known associates, from their we'll rule them out one by one."

"Good plan but how do you know they're still in New York?" Spiderman asked.

"They have Beast, we know he's not on The Cauldron, meaning he's still in this dimension. They wouldn't move him out of the state because they need to be in New York, hoping to get the other scientists at the Avengers compound." Alice reasoned "Besides we're still here."

"You think they'll come after us?" Spiderman asked, he had never considered this possibility.

"They may have slain Captain America, but we captured two of their allies, destroyed most of their Doombots and have two former Cauldron prisoners in our hands. To think that someone as tyrannical as Doom won't retaliate would be extremely foolish. I'd say there is an 80% chance they will try and attack us, if it was me, I'd separate everyone and kill them in quick succession instead of the teams of heroes head on." Alice gave an extended answer, while pacing the edge of the tower, unfazed by the 541 metre drop.

Spiderman was taken aback by the bluntness of Alice's words, commenting "You really were a hitwoman, weren't you?"

"I hate to say it, but I was the best. Even when I lost my arm I could still tear through my marks, in the seven months before I got my prosthetic I...I was still used as a weapon." Alice remembered aloud, looking at her cybernetic arm with a poker face "But that was the old me, now I just want to get this hunt over with and go home to Zootopia."

"We'll catch Andi and Ronin, find out where Beast is, save the mammals and get you all home. Easy." Spiderman quietly rallied, finding it hard to believe someone so sweet could have emerged from such darkness.

When Spiderman and Alice arrived back at the SHIELD apartment complex via web shooters, they found that every member of Ceartais and Champions were focusing on their new tasks, invigorated after the emotional funeral of Captain America the day before. All the heroes had a new drive, new purpose and new mission, it helped them focus. Mage, Viv and Snowguard were on the gym level of the building; testing out Clara's powers. Ms Marvel was alone on a roof, conducting a secret project she was working on. Spitfire, Iron Heart, Wasp and Brawn were brainstorming ideas on how to recreate a rift in the first of the two apartments the mammals were stationed in, Kion and Robyn were having a childish push up contest in the armoury while Hannah did her morning target practice with a variety of weapons a few feet away. Luna was with Dragoness pouring over the files that the SHIELD operative had acquired looking for any weakness for Andi. Alice indented to talk to Dragoness regarding her outlaw nest theory but first she wanted a mid-morning snack, she and her babies were hungry.

Alice walked into the apartment and found Arthur sat at the dining table with a tablet in his hand, showing young Jason some images "Ok, now look; some humans are police officers too, and cops are what?" Arthur prompted.

"Good guys." Jason answered, the young caracal smiling ever so slightly.

"What's all this?" Alice asked, setting her sword down and trotting over to the fridge, grabbing a punnet of strawberries and carton of cream.

"Well I'm trying to show Jason that humans are mammals too, that some are good and have normal jobs like the ones back in Zootopia." Arthur explained, searching google images for photos of teachers.

"You're helping him with his fear of humans, that's sweet Arthur." Alice smiled, getting out a bowl from the cupboard and emptying the strawberries into it.

"But humans eat other mammals." Jason said out of nowhere.

"Who told you that?" Arthur asked, hating that this truth had been revealed to him.

"I saw an ad on the tv for lamb chops, they eat sheep! What if they eat caracals too?" Jason worried.

"I think you're ok, humans only eat prey." Alice tried to ease his worries while pouring the cream over the strawberries

"So, they would eat my friends back home?" Jason asked, seeming more freak out than before.

"Jason calm down, look humans wouldn't-" Arthur never got to finish his sentence.

BOOM! The entire outer wall of the apartment shattered and erupted with an explosion, Jason instinctively activated his metal fur and dived under the table, Alice grabbed her sword and ducked around the kitchen island while Arthur was knocked by the blast. Parts of the wall crumbled away and through the fire, smoke and dust a drone could be seen. It was about the size of hatchback car, being kept airborne by the four helicopters like rotors, a myriad of weapons could be seen attached to the tool of death including a machine gun, micro missile launcher and most worryingly an experimental small rail run. "I hate it when I'm right." Alice hissed, peeking behind the kitchen island only to find her hunch about a possible attack had come to fruition and the sounds other explosions around the building meant there was more than one of these drones.

"What is that thing?!" Arthur yelled before coughing from the dust.

"I'm going to guess it's a present from Ronin and Andi!" Alice shouted back, rushing over to Jason to see that metal furred cat was paralysed and rooted with fear under the table.

"We need to get you and Jason out of-Shit! Get behind me!" Arthur warned with a bark, the cop seeing the machine gun powering up and aiming inside the apartment. As the first shot fired, he held out his paws, drawing his powers from within and forcing the bullets to stop in mid-air.

"Arthur!" Alice screamed, worried for the wolf's safety.

"Don't move from behind me, I'm not letting anyone else die! Too many have gone!" Arthur bellowed, wisps of blue light danced around him, even the terrified Jason gawped at the spectacle. Dozens upon dozens of bullets were stopping mid-air a few feet away from the cop.

"You can't hold those bullets forever!" Alice snapped, tugging on Jason's clothes trying to move him but his wouldn't budge.

"It'll run out of ammo soon, when it does run, I'll draw it's fire away from you and Jason!" Arthur instructed through gritted teeth as the blue light whirled around him.

"But-" Alice began to protest then ceased, but she knew it was the best course of action, she didn't want her unborn kits to be harmed or for Jason to be killed.

"Arthur...your pendant." Jason uttered, barely audible over the gunfire and explosions.

Arthur didn't hear the boy, but he saw the pendant it rose from around his neck glowing the same colours the wisps of light were before he could react a cacophony of voices in different tongues raced through his head, he'd be scared if he already wasn't battling for his life and then like a shot the pendant tore itself away from Arthur and floated mid-air for the briefest of moments still glowing bright blue before zipping towards Arthur, piercing and burying itself in his chest making the area where the pendent pierced glow as well. His screams were loud indicating to the others what was happing to him was painful, but he kept his focus on the drone and stopping the machine gun fire from hitting Alice and Jason.

"What on earth..." Alice uttered as she saw something she couldn't fathom, from the very faintly bleeding bright blue hole in Arthur's chest something was emerging; at first it looked to be a diamond but it was slowly starting to show a handle of a sword.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! A Sword is coming out of Arthur's chest!? Where is everyone?! Where are Andi & Ronin? What did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review! Next time on The Broken Mirror; Arthur taps into his greater power, Clara takes to the sky and Ms Marvel is caught off guard. Please review and c ya soon...actually not soon I'm sorry, I've got another funeral to go abroad for so the earliest i can post the next chapter is April 8th.)


	35. Knight and Sirius

(AN/Hey folks, it's Garouge/Crewefox with another chapter of The Broken Mirror, thank you for all the lovely messages after my recent losses. So without further ado let's get cracking..."

 **Chapter 34-** **Knight & Sirius**

"Focus on the energy within your soul, can you sense it?" Mage instructed, standing beside Clara in the gym.

"I can sense that you've turned into a hippy." Clara chuckled at her uncharacteristically serious boyfriend.

"Please Professor, we must accurately gauge your power level and the best way to do that is for me to measure your energy output." Viv requested in a monotone manner "Only then can we utilize you in rescuing the other mammals."

"Maybe we're going about this in the wrong way." Snowguard commented, sounding puzzled.

The three heroes and one potential hero were stood in the SHIELD building's gym level, there was a sparring area next to the weight machines and the dumbbells where Viv had set up a dummy for Clara to fire a lightning bolt at, the only thing was that she couldn't activate her power and after fifteen minutes the group was growing bored.

"What do you mean?" Mage asked the youngest Champion.

"Well, you and me are magic users, we tap into the energy of the universe, Viv uses the program her Dad built into her circuitry to fire beams from her gem. Clara's not even a mutant or inhuman, she and the other kidnapped mammals are something new and we don't even know how they work." Snowguard explained.

Viv bowed her head and mumbled "Amka is right, it was presumptuous of me to understand your power, I'm sorry Professor."

"Don't be," Clara eased the AI's worries "and honestly I'm not feeling the best today."

"Is everything alright?" Mage asked, his voice shifting from teacher to caring lover mode.

Clara looked at Viv and Snowguard and then back at Kodi before asking cautiously "Do they have trans mammals in this dimension?"

"I think so," Mage shrugged "I mean I've seen Pride flags outside bars and I know they still call it the LGBT community, so I assume the T still means trans."

"If you are worrying about prejudices about sexuality and gender from The Champions fear not, I'm a lesbian and have never received such bullying." Viv assured, not reading the situation.

"I don't think that's the problem." Snowguard commented, figuring what Clara was getting at.

"Look I'm open about being transgender it's just..." Clara began and then sighed "when I was Doom's ship he wanted us in peak health, that means we were given all our regular medications, including my HRT and it's been a couple of days since I had my prescription so I feeling pretty crumby."

"Oh that's awful, you poor thing." Snowguard sympathised.

"Damn, I knew I forgot something." Mage berated himself.

"Huh?" Clara sounded.

"I was so excited about you being back and I got distracted with Cap's funeral that I forgot to tell you Olivia's got your meds." Mage informed, sounding awkward for forgetting something so important.

"She has?" Clara yipped, her brown eyes glistening.

"Yeah, I mean she's the owner of a pharmaceutical company so I asked her to pack a variety of HRT drugs you might use..." Mage was starting to ramble, thinking he was in trouble for forgetting but he couldn't be more wrong.

Clara wrapped Mage in a hug and started peppering his face with quick and sweet kisses while saying at rapid pace "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"You're not mad that I forgot?" Mage asked, the affection causing him to smile.

"Are you kidding? You're the sweetest, most caring boyfriend ever!" Clara gushed, hugging the taller wolf.

Through Viv's eyes her energy scanners noticed Clara's energy level rise as she hugged Mage causing her to simply comment "Interesting."

"What is?" Snowguard asked, noticing Viv's curious expression.

"Professor Bloom's electrical energy increased when she was kissing and embracing Mage, maybe her powers are linked to her emotional state?" Viv offered her hypothesis.

Clara thought about this for a moment before saying "Back on the Cauldron I first started to glow when I saw footage of Kodi from a Doombot feed then during the whole escape thing I was desperate for Zoe and Jason to get through the rift I was able to use my power."

"Then let's test this out, try thinking of things that make you happy; your family, your friends." Mage suggested.

"A salmon and cream cheese bagel from my favourite deli?" Clara smiled.

"Whatever makes you smile." Mage grinned.

Clara closed her eyes and let the happy memories and thoughts resonate within her memory, she was at for a good twenty seconds but felt no change so she huffed "I don't think this is working."

"I beg to differ." Mage chuckled.

Clara opened her eyes to find the others staring at her with amazement, she looked at her paws to see them glowing purple and that they were slightly transparent "...Whoa." she reacted.

"Clara's that amazing!" Snowguard praised, having to squint and shield her eyes from the brightness of Clara's powered form.

"Most impressive." Viv added, amazed by the sheer energy level he was detecting, that power should be deadly to everyone within ten feet of her but it wasn't harming anyone.

"You look even more beautiful." Mage charmed, staring at her eyes that had transformed from brown to glowing green.

"Thanks, sweetie." Clara replied, gifting him a quick kiss on his lips that made Mage's body tingle "So I guess I need to practice with this glow power thing...but there's something more important I need to decide; my codename."

"Seriously?" Mage scoffed "You want to be a hero like us?"

"At least until we rescue Esso, Zoe and the others from The Cauldron besides I've already got a name in mind." Clara answered, testing her abilities and levitating off the ground "Ok pop quiz time; what is the brightest star in the night sky?"

"No idea." Mage shrugged.

"Um, the north star?" Snowguard guessed.

"It is a trick question, the brightest star in the sky is actually two stars that form a binary star system called Sirius in Canis Major constellation." Viv called out "It often appears as different colours depending on Earth's position earning it the nickname 'The Rainbow Star'."

"Hmm I wonder why my gorgeous queer girlfriend would choose that name?" Mage asked rhetorically.

"Oh come on, just imagine it; 'She escaped a prison ship adrift in another dimension," Clara performed in theatrical manner " 'Now she will return to rescue her friends as the spectacular SIRIUS!"

"Got to say she has the theatricality of hero work down." Snowguard grinned.

"Ok Sirius, enough posing, let's see what you can do." Mage challenged, in awe of Clara's beauty and confidence.

000

The twinkling purple light from Clara's powered form flickered through the window, it couldn't be seen from street level but across the way on another high rise building, a white haired woman was looking through a pair of high spec binoculars, her golden eyes identifying the physicist, another wolf and two Champions "I can see Bloom." Ronin informed though her comm attached to her collar.

" **Shame she hasn't taken a little stroll out of the building, Doctor Doom's throne room would've looked awesome with a wolf fur rug."** Andi replied with demented humour, the red headed archer was on another building around the corner, ready to snipe at anyone trying to escape.

"He'll just have to be satisfied with a video feed of her charred remains." Ronin said plainly, setting down her binoculars and going over to the controls for the drones, she booted up the tools of destruction while getting out her phone and selecting a track from her music collection; Mozart's Requiem. As the music began to play a small smile grew under Ronin's skull mask, she looked at the laptop like monitor of the drone controls and double checked the program order given, the drones were to cause as much structural damage as possible and kill anything moving in the building. "Drones are on the way from the docks, ETA ninety seconds."

" **Hey Spiderman just arrived back in the building, he's entered through a window on the fourteenth floor, but there was something odd** **on his back."** Andraste told, her voice cautious.

"Fourteenth floor?" Ronin mumbled, picking up her binoculars once more and looking over at the building, she found the floor she was looking for and through the window she could see Spiderman chatting to someone much smaller than him, but she couldn't see this person, only a pair of white rabbit ears "Another animal?" She uttered, the followed the pair of ears until they walked into an apartment where she had already spotted Arthur Knight and Jason Alonso but as the owner of the ears became visible Ronin gasped as realisation hit her. The first thing she noticed was the katana the bunny was holding, it was a smaller version of her own, complete with the red feather dangling from the chain. Then there was the white fur, golden eyes and visible scars on parts of her face "It's me." Ronin whispered but could be heard over the comm.

" **Say what?"** Andi replied.

"The mammal version of me is a rabbit." Ronin answered, her voice turning bitter as she saw the very pronounced baby bump "And she's pregnant!"

" **...Easy now, lover. Remember the mission."** Andi spoke, sounding a little scared.

"It's not fair!" Ronin quietly snarled, slamming the binoculars down and going back to the drone controls and typing in a new command.

" **Ronin, what are you doing?"** Andi questioned, now extremely worried.

"Don't worry, I'm sticking to the mission, I just want to make sure that rabbit is the first one dead." Ronin assured, her heart beating faster as the sound of the Drones rotors got closer and closer and she felt herself gripping her katana tightly as the first missiles hit the building.

000

"Arthur...your pendant." Jason uttered, barely audible over the gunfire and explosions.

Arthur didn't hear the boy, but he saw the pendant it rose from around his neck glowing the same colours the wisps of light were before he could react a cacophony of voices in different tongues raced through his head, he'd be scared if he already wasn't battling for his life and then like a shot the pendant tore itself away from Arthur and floated mid-air for the briefest of moments still glowing bright blue before zipping towards Arthur, piercing and burying itself in his chest making the area where the pendent pierced glow as well. His screams were loud indicating to the others what was happening to him was painful, but he kept his focus on the drone and stopping the machine gun fire from hitting Alice and Jason.

"What on earth..." Alice uttered as she saw something she couldn't fathom, from the very faintly bleeding bright blue hole in Arthur's chest something was emerging; at first it looked to be a diamond but it was slowly starting to show a handle of a sword.

"AARRRRGH!" Arthur screamed at the top of his lungs as the sword continued to break free of it flesh and fur sheath "Ah...the sword….it was my..ahhhh!." he panted through his agony, but he couldn't focus on his pain, he had to keep the bullets at bay.

Alice peeked a look at the drone, she could tell it's machine gun wasn't following a standard program, it was starting to overheat "Arthur the gun will fail any second when it does, we're all going to run, you hear me?"

"Y-yeah!" Arthur snarled, feeling lightheaded from all the power he was using.

As if on cue, the machine gun stopped firing with smoke rising from the glowing red metal, "Now!" Alice shouted making sure she had her katana in her paws, the three raced from the apartment and soon as they were out of the line of fire the sword in Arthur's chest emerged even more violently causing the wolf to fall to his knees in agony. He knew that in any other circumstances pulling out a sharp object out of a stab wound would be suicidal but for some reason he knew he'd be ok, once he got over the unimaginable pain he was enduring. Arthur grabbed the sword's handle and began to pull out of his glowing blue chest, having no idea of how the large blade was being born out of the blue light and blood. When the sword was finally free Arthur was crying tears of pain while the blue light of his chest faded and the wound sealing with a final flicker of light.

"Arthur we need to keep moving, the elevators are too dangerous we'll have to use the s-" Alice tried to rally but stopped mid-sentence when she saw the same drone outside the hallway window, it was targeting them with a missile.

Arthur's body was on auto pilot as he lifted the great sword, in a split second he had swiped at the space in front of him the air crackled in front of the blade for a moment before a wave of blue energy sprouted from the blade and shot through the window and striking the drone causing to explode in an instant "What did I?" Arthur breathed, looking at the heavy sword in his paws.

"You saved us Arthur." Alice said to him in relief but mainly tried to snap the brit back to reality "But we need to move!"

"Is there anyone alive in here!?" A frantic New Jersey voice shouted over the explosions and alarms.

"Ms. Marvel, we're out here!" Alice called out.

The Champions' leader came dashing out of the destroyed apartment and looked relieved when she saw the trio "Oh thank goodness, you're all safe."

"Sit rep!" Alice ordered, trying to focus the teen and get an idea of what they were dealing with.

Ms Marvel seemed to snap back into mission mode, even though she had only been a hero a short time she was very professional "We've got eight drones, well seven now, all super advanced with missile launchers and machine guns, I was on the roof when they started attacking." she told quickly.

"It has to be Andi and Ronin, listen they won't be far, they don't have access to satellites so the drones must be controlled from a device close by we need to scout the buildings and find the controls." Alice instructed, using her murderous knowledge "But first we need to get out of here."

"I've already spoke to the others on the comm link, we're trying to evacuate as many people as possible. But I need to get you all to safety before I can help them!" Ms Marvel answered.

"Take Jason and Alice first, I'll be fine." Arthur implored, his chest still aching abit.

"No." Jason replied meekly.

"You need to be brave Jason, Ms Marvel will look after you until I get there, you can trust her." Arthur implored.

Alice was worried for Luna on an upper level, but she was more concerned for her kits, she put a paw on her bump and stepped over to Ms Marvel and said "Get us out of here quick, you've got people to save and butts to kick."

" _Oui Madame."_ Ms Marvel said with a nod at the French lapin, letting her fist grow to the size of a small car and scooping up both Jason and Alice.

In a scurry Ms Marvel exited the now broken window leaving Arthur alone with fire and smoke around him, he looked at the sword as it glowed faintly in his paw and said "Help out, you bloody idiot."

000

"You are not side-lining me!" Clara exclaimed, before coughing from the smoke and dust filling the room.

"You are ill prepared for a rescue mission; you still don't have a full grasp of your abilities." Viv said pragmatically, using her scanners to measure the structural integrity of the buildings, the building was holding so far.

"We don't have time to stand around and talk!" Snowguard yelled.

"Kodi, let me help!" Clara barged past the two heroines to her very conflicted looking love.

Mage looked at Clara and made a decision, he knew he'd get in trouble for it but it was the right choice, he quickly took a hold of Clara and said "I'm sorry." behind Clara's back he activated his sling ring to a portal on the streets below before pushing Clara through, landing on her butt next to a bus stop with stunned New Yorkers.

"Don't you..." Clara began but the portal closed before she could finish her sentence "...dare." She then got to her feet and looked at the drones attacking the tower and spoke "I won't be benched."

The She Wolf thought she could at least help with the evacuation of the building, looking across the street and seeing the coughing, soot covered SHIELD workers file out of the building but then even more violence erupted in the already chaotic scene, agents wearing the SHIELD emblem were being picked off with arrows from above. Clara fixed her vision to the rooftops and could she shadow of an archer taking aim and killing the agents. Clara felt the urge to help, she clenched her fists and told the people taking videos around her "Stand back!" she then dove into her mind bringing up every positive thought that sprung up; dinner with her family, her first date with Kodi and the need to protect her new friends. In an instant her eyes turned green and her body was overtaken by a purple light "Ok just fly at the enemy, snatch her bow and hand her over to the cops, easy peasy." Clara psyched herself up before launching herself at the archer but it was only when she was in the air that she realised her had aimed herself too high and she was flying with much more velocity than she wanted "Too fast, too fast, too fast!" Clara panicked shutting off her power with fright, flying over Andi and crashing into a cell tower on the roof, before crashing down.

"What!?" Andi barked, but then she turned around and saw who and landed a few feet away; Clara was sprawled on a vent cover, flickering between her regular and powered state, groaning with her skirt riding high inadvertently showing off her knickers "Holy shit, today is my lucky day!" Andi chuckled, putting away her bow "Professor Bloom, Doctor Doom misses you."

"Y-You're Andi, you work for that asshole!" Clara blustered, ignoring her aches and clambering off the vent before powering up once more "And the name's Sirius!"

"Oooh the pretty puppy wants to play a heroine?" Andi mocked "But Lord Doom has other plans for you!" the assassin sped forwards, too fast for the inexperienced Clara to react, and sank one of her daggers into Clara's belly, but was shocked to feel no resistance. Andi looked down and saw the dagger had gone through Clara's gut but not pierced it. There was no flesh, no cries and most annoying to the killer; no blood. "How!?" Andi growled.

"I don't know." Clara answered, sounding stunned. The blade had passed through her as if she was air, she decided to test it out by taking a few steps forward and passing through Andi like a ghost "But looks like those daggers and arrows aren't going to do much against me." she sassed.

Andi shuddered at the odd sensation of being walked through, she knew that Clara would attack her soon enough so she needed her to get to be distracted and luckily for the merc that distraction came in the shape of a Daily Bugle News chopper "True but you know what my arrows can hit?" Andi asked snidely before firing an explosive arrow at the chopper's back rotor "That helicopter."

"Oh crap!" Clara panicked, the chopper was already starting to spin out of control.

"Hop to it, hero." Andi teased, Clara reacted as expected and flew up to the helicopter while Andi grapple arrowed to another rooftop.

Clara didn't know what to do, she just flew at the news copter and went straight through it "No, no, no, what do I do?!" Clara freaked as the aircraft began to lose altitude but then it suddenly stopped mid-air "What?" Clara mumbled.

The chopper began to rise and rise until underneath it was Iron Heart "You ok, Clara?" she asked.

"...F-fine." Clara answered, utterly embarrassed. The others were right; she wasn't ready for combat.

Iron Heart set the chopper down on the nearest flat roof before saying "Help me get these civilians to safety."

"Right." Clara replied sounding disheartened, floating down to the roof.

Iron ripped off the door of the chopper and helped out the shaken journalists, she looked over at the she wolf and figured what she was feeling "Everyone messes up on their first try, even I did." she offered.

"...I guess." Clara mumbled, her power fading and colour returning to normal, all her positive thoughts drained.

"Dang girl, you're a woman of science like me." Iron Heart huffed "You should know that the first experiment always fails but what do we do?"

"We try again." Clara answered, her eyes turning green once more.

"That's right, now let's help with the evacuation." Iron Heart urged.

Above the trashed helicopter in the sky around the SHIELD building the seven remaining drones were still launching attacks on the tower and its occupants but The Champions and Team Ceartais were trying to take them out of commission as soon as possible. Spiderman web slinged over to one but was so focused on webbing up the mechanisms on it he didn't notice when another drone approached him, it's machine gun clipped his head and caused him to fall to the ground in a ragdoll fashion, when he was twenty feet from the ground Brawn jumped up from the street level and caught his friend mid-air before he the road with a bloody splat.

Spitfire wasn't surprised that these drones were dodging her micro missiles, these were expertly built weapons of war and would've been built in with target scrambling technology "Scrapping up close then." Spitfire seethed, zipping towards a drone and began tearing it apart piece by piece while the machine gun rounds pinged off her bulletproof armour.

Down on the ground, Bullet and Scarlet were helping the wounded get to safety but it pained the couple that they couldn't help out in the air "I wish I had one of those Kree guns from the railyard." Bullet said in frustrated voice, leading a SHIELD agent with a broken arm to a pharmacy across the street that was allowing people to shelter themselves from the carnage.

"Yeah, I might be immortal but I don't want to test it against the blades of those copter' drones." Scarlet shared her wife's displeasure of being unable to assist, the red clad heroine using her superior strength to carry two unconscious SHIELD office workers across the street.

Suddenly there was the familiar snarl of a lion and Roar used his powerful leg muscles to bound a hundred feet into the air and snatching a drone out of the sky, the deadly sharp rotors breaking like glass against his impenetrable skin as he brought it to the ground and start smashing it to pieces with his brute strength.

"Nice moves, big guy!" Mage yelled a complimented, flying over his teammates and casting a spell that caused him to split into several copies of himself, confusing a nearby drones targeting program giving him enough time to activate a spell, in an instant the drone stopped and each of its moving parts disassembled and landed softly on the ground "Now Iron Heart and Spitfire can find out who built you."

Andi was running and grappling across the rooftops, thankful that Viv Vision and Snowguard were busy taking out drones and not noticing her. The attack had not gone as planned, there were at least a dozen dead but none of the heroes, Doom would not pleased but he would be even more furious if herself and Alice were captured. It was time to bail, the only thing was she was surprised that Ronin hadn't called for the retreat already, she was the more level headed of the two. She grappled onto the roof the french/japanese assassin was stationed and immediately started talking "Lover, we've got to cheese it, this job has gone to hell!"

"No." Ronin said blankly.

"What do you mean 'no'?!" Andi snapped "The targets have nearly taken out most of our drones and we still have the main mission Doom gave us, we cannot be captured."

"That rabbit still breathes, I need her dead!" Ronin said furiously, typing away at the control unit for the drones.

Then realisation struck Andi and she voiced with disbelief "That's why the drones aren't acting right, you've put all of your attention on the Zootopia version of yourself!? Why!?"

"She's..." Ronin began to say but saw a wave of blue light approach her, she rolled out of the way as the energy blast hit the drone control unit causing it to explode and all the drones to stop working, as the heroes scrambled to catch the falling machines the dust settled around Andi and Ronin.

"You disgust me." A voice panted, through the smoke.

"Andi, enemy on the north side of the roof." Ronin could see the oxygen and carbon dioxide in their attacker's body, even through the smoke.

Arthur Knight stepped out, with wisps of blue energy dancing around him as he carried his great sword with ease "Trying to kill a child then kill all those humans and on top of that, a pregnant mammal carrying a litter of kits….you sicken me."

"For god's sake, another wolf?" Andi groaned "And a righteous one at that. And what makes you think you can beat us, Fido?"

"Cause I have this….Excalibur." Arthur said, looking at the sword with a bit of puzzlement then looking back at Ronin and Andi.

"Wow, you're a geek, you called your sword Excalibur? Who do you think you are, King Arthur?" Andi scoffed, deliberately stalling while Ronin prepared to counter attack.

"No…..something more!" Arthur barked, the energy swirling around his sword once more ready to launch another energy wave but before he could raise his arm, Arthur fell to the ground with a paralysing needle stinging his neck.

"It's too easy when they talk too much." Ronin commented before looking around and deciding it was time to leave "Kill him and let's fall back."

"That's what I've been saying." Andi growled, going over to the paralysed wolf and drawing one of her dagger only for to be shot out of her hand, Andi and Ronin instinctively dived behind cover with the red head peeking out to see where the shot had come from and gasped a little when she saw who it was. Across the street, on the twentieth floor of the heavily damaged SHIELD building there was section of wall that had fallen away leaving the office space exposed and two shooters taking aim at them, Luna Wilde and Special Agent Dragoness, the vixen with her bow and the winged inhuman with a rifle, they both fired again. Dragoness' bullet missed Ronin but Luna's arrow zipped towards Andi's head, at the last millisecond she moved her head and the arrowhead gashed against her left cheek. "She's using real arrows...she's trying to kill me?" Andi half gasped and half laughed "Oh Mommy's girl, you've made my day!"

"Andi, retreat to rally point gamma six." Ronin ordered before dropping a smoke bomb, covering the whole roof in white smoke to mask their escape route.

Five minutes later Luna was on the roof where Ronin had been stationed, administering the paralysis antidote to the floored Arthur, thankfully Alice and Ronin shared the exact same recipes for poisons and their remedies. "That was brave of you Arthur, stupid, but brave." Luna complimented and insulted at the same time while helping him sit up from the ground.

"I know..." Arthur wheezed, unable to stand yet "But at least I found the sword."

"Where was it?" Luna asked, more concerned with picking up her arrow with Andi's blood on it after helping Arthur sit up abit.

"Inside me...I think?" Arthur kind of answered, his voice barely audible of the massive amounts of sirens from the street below.

Luna gave him a quizzical look and asked "Metaphorically or physically?"

"Both...in a sort of way." Arthur wrangled with the concept, taking a good grip of the weapon.

"Luna!" Alice's voice called out.

Luna and Arthur turned to see Ms Marvel stretching over to their rooftop with Alice holding onto her. "Alice!" Luna couldn't help but shout, running over and embracing her wife as soon as her feet touched the ground "Are you ok? Are the babies?"

"They're fine, Ms Marvel had an EMT check me over, I'm alright thanks to her and Arthur" Alice assured, kissing her beloved.

Ms Marvel saw that Arthur was about to ask something and pre-emptively answered "Jason's safe with Bullet and Scarlet, they even got him some ice cream to cheer him up."

"Thank you, Ms Marvel." Arthur replied, sounding sore from the poison still in his system.

Alice noticed the bloody arrow in Luna's hand and asked quietly "Why did you use real arrows? You could've used a tazer or sleeper?"

Luna was prepared for this question and smiled "To make one of them bleed, not kill, only bleed. A wounded mark is so much easier to track."

"You wish to help with my hunt? Clever tactic." Alice smiled back, finding no reason to disbelieve her. "But we need to help the others with the evacuation first."

"No." Luna replied curtly.

"No?" Alice reacted, looking surprised as did Arthur and Ms Marvel after she helped the wolf back onto his feet.

"There a dozens of first responders, fire fighters and other heroes down there. They won't miss us if we chase after Ronin and Andi." Luna tried to convince.

"Are you nuts? You two can't go on your own, you've only got half your gear since you quit being Andraste and Alice is heavily pregnant." Ms Marvel said sternly, hating that she sounded like her mother.

"Lend me two of your Champions, we can track em' to where their hiding before the trail goes cold, find Beast and bring them down before they pull another attack again." Luna bargained, hiding her real agenda and plan "Or would you rather another sixteen SHIELD agents be murdered if we lose them?"

Ms Marvel didn't like being baited like this, but the vixen made good points "Snowguard and Spiderman go with you, the second you find them you call it in, the last thing we need is more death."

"Happy hunting." Luna simply said, looking back at the destruction Andi had caused, more sure than ever that the psychopath needed to die.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Ronin's lost it! Arthur has his sword! What did you think!? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on TBM; Alice becomes suspicious of Luna's actions, Ms Marvel reveals a project she's been working on and Wasp and Olivia start to see the Arthur's potential to help them. Please review and c ya soon...)


	36. Hunting Buddies

(AN/Hey Folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here's another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Damn writer's block was a bane this week, but thank you for all your reviews and messages you've sent me. And as always I'd love to thank my dev team who help me create new chapters. So without further ado let's cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 35- Hunting buddy.**

Ronin and Andi had separated when the escaped their botched attack on the SHIELD safehouse, out of the dozen rendezvous points Andi had set up across Manhattan she chose the one that was closest to a bridge off the island and eastbound towards Queens. The meeting point was a junk yard centre run by people with very little scruples, for a fee criminals could stash vehicles here or dispose of them if needs be and the fact they didn't use security cameras was an added bonus. Andi had arrived at the yard first, finding a very average looking sedan that was stashed there earlier and opened the trunk. Andi tossed her bow in, along with her quiver and daggers then took out a change of civilian clothes to get dressed into. As she unlaced her emerald green bodice, Ronin jumped over the fence of the junkyard and walked towards her wife. "Do you mind telling me what the hell you were playing at back there?" Andi asked coldly, taking off her bodice and quickly putting on a t-shirt.

"I...I lost focus." Ronin replied, sounding ashamed.

"Yeah, no shit." Andi said, still cold "And why? Because you saw a knocked up rabbit."

"I reacted badly, I know but there's no changing that now." Ronin mumbled, removing her various weapons and putting them in the trunk of the car.

"I get why you were upset but why did you go so off plan?" Andi asked, sounding vexed. Getting out of her leather trousers and replacing it with a pair of shorts.

"When I saw that bunny I...I remembered everything we've lost." Ronin answered, her shoulders slumped "Every time you held my hand, every time the doctors told us what we already knew, every time I screamed in agony. I was envious, I was angry and I reacted on impulse...I'm sorry."

"Lover." Andi sighed, her icy demeanour melting as she stepped over and held her much shorter spouse close "I never want you to relive those memories."

"Five miscarriages, I never even got to feel them kick." Ronin began to whimper, holding onto Andi tightly "Yet that rabbit has what we can never have, it's not fair!"

"Hush, now." Andi soothed, rocking Ronin slightly "Look things have been rough for us, I can't have kids because of being shot too many times and you just have bad luck when it comes to pregnancy but we WILL have a family. As soon as we complete this assignment for Doctor Doom and we're set up in Latveria we'll adopt as many children as we want and give them the childhood you never had."

Ronin was quietly crying and took comfort in her lover's embrace "I'm so sorry, Andi."

"It'll be ok we just have to smooth it over with-" Andi began to answer but was interrupted by the ringtone coming from Ronin's phone, both killers knowing who it was that was calling "Doom."

"If we ignore it he won't think twice about killing us." Ronin told Andi and herself, she retrieved the phone from one of the pockets of her sneaking suit and placed it on the ground,

Both women knelt out of respect with their heads bowed as the custom phone's hologram projector flickered into life showing Doctor Doom, stood with his arms crossed and his eyes glaring down at the assassins **"Doom is furious."** he said with ironic calm.

"We beg your forgiveness, Lord Doom." Andi spoke up first.

" **Fourteen dead SHIELD workers, scores injured but not a single self righteous hero among them, most notably that cursed wolf Bloom, Doom was promised her hide but instead you offer apologies and bowed heads."** Doom bristled.

"The fault lies with me, M'Lord. I failed to control the drones properly." Ronin grovelled with a half truth.

" **Doom saw the footage; shoddy work that tarnishes both your reputation and the might of Latvaria. If you weren't required for the remainder of the plan Doom would organise torture to educate on how to properly execute your missions.** " Doom threaten **ed "But there is no time to dwell on your failure; Ronin head back to where you've been hiding and await further instructions, maybe it will give you time to appreciate Doom's seldom given mercy."**

"I am not worthy, M'Lord." Ronin replied quickly, breathing a sigh of relief that she would not be killed for her mistake.

" **Andi, go check on Dr. McCoy. Make sure the Beast is working to schedule, Doom has selected a new prisoner to extract powers from."** Doom instructed.

"Yes, M'Lord." Andi obeyed, grateful the conversation went so well as Doom cut the connection and the projection vanished.

000

Despite the fourteen souls lost and despite parts of the building missing, the SHIELD safehouse was still standing. The heroes let the emergency services and outside SHIELD operatives come and begin the clean-up operation while the remaining heroes huddled in the lab and it didn't take long for the team to figure out how Ronin and Andi had tracked them down.

Jason was sat in a chair, with his mouth wide open with Arthur close by and Brawn holding a tray with some very small tools on it. "I got it!" A voice cheered from within Jason's mouth, a few seconds later Wasp strolled across Jason's tongue holding a incredibly small silver piece of metal shaped like circle, she flew off the tongue and returned to her normal size "Ladies and Gentleman, we have a latvarian tech tracker."

"That thing was attached to my tooth?" Jason asked, spooked by this revelation.

"Yeah, it's my fault for not sweeping you and Clara for bugs when you came through the rift." Wasp criticized herself, putting the tiny tools back on the tray Brawn was holding.

"So I'm the reason..." Jason began to talk, sounding sullen.

"You weren't the reason this happened Jason," Brawn assured, put the tray down on a workbench "Ronin and Andi would've found this place anyway, SHIELD has a lot of leaks lately."

"Jason." Scarlet's voice called over, she was holding a bucket of KFC "Have some of this and cheer yourself up?"

"'Kay." The Caracal responded, hopping off the chair and going over to the hybrid.

"Poor kid, he's been through hell and back. Just when he thinks he's safe, this happens." Brawn said quietly, his tone caught between sympathy and guilt.

Wasp looked at Jason interact with Scarlet and Bullet, the new mothers were trying their best to make the child comfortable but something seemed off to her "Arthur, how old is Jason?" she looked to the wolf.

"Twelve." Arthur answered, still feeling groggy from Ronin's poison.

"Really?" Wasp asked instantly, Brawn shared his teammate's baffled look "I thought he was younger, he doesn't act like a twelve year old."

Arthur nodded in agreement before elaborating "Jason's had a bit of a rocky childhood from what I've learned, when he was younger he had leukaemia. Anyway he missed a lot of school years and when he finally beat it he joined grades where he was nearly four years older than his classmates."

"And now I feel even more sorry for the kid." Brawn mumbled.

"This is mental!" The excited voice of Olivia cackled from the centre of the lab.

"Olivia, have some respect." Iron Heart hushed "People have died."

"Sorry, sorry. But you've got to admit these readings are insane." Olivia made an excuse, using her tablet to display data from Arthur's sword which was placed on a diagnostics table with multiple scanners running over it with Viv assessing the weapon as well.

Arthur walked over to the lab table, his muscles still twinging with pain after the battle, "So, what have you found out about it?" he asked the group.

"Well as an scientist, this simultaneously scares the living crap out of me while also make me excited as a wee child on Christmas morning." Olivia answered, reaching into her pockets and pulling out a rodent sized chocolate bar to feast on.

"What's frightening about it?" Wasp questioned, shrinking down to Olivia's size and standing next to her on the lab table so she could take a look at the data.

"The energy emitted from the sword is similar to Arthur's powers, it seems to be able to control particles." Viv answered.

"So I'm not stopping stuff with my mind, I'm manipulating the energy and particles around me?" Arthur asked, sounding unsure.

"If these readings are to be believed, yes." Viv confirmed "Which in itself is extremely worrying."

"The ability to manipulate particles, someone could do a lot of damage with that. I guess Doctor Doom isn't that smart after all if he thought your powers weren't useful." Brawn commented, slapping Arthur on the back.

"What gets me is the whole pendant going into your chest and magically growing a sword out of your chest." Iron Heart griped.

"What's to get? It's magic, I mean we've seen Snowguard and Mage do some crazy shit." Olivia replied in between bites of her chocolate bar.

"That sword isn't completely magic, someone engineered this thing with some pretty advanced science.." Iron Heart said firmly, pointing at the weapon.

"Really?" Arthur asked, surprised.

"It's got circuitry and code embedded in it, like someone programmed it for a specific purpose. Plus the materials are so vastly varied it doesn't make sense; it's part adamantium, vibranium, the stuff that goes into Nova corp tech and even Uru is in that thing. Those materials are from opposite ends of the universe to each other and yet someone or a group of people gathered them and made this." Iron Heart ranted, leaning on Brawn's arm and resting her head on his muscles "This is giving me a headache."

"It is mind blowing." Brawn said, pulling his girlfriend into a cuddle.

Arthur's head was hurting to but wanted to know something important "Scarlet and Bullet's son said something about this sword being used to find rifts, can it?" he asked.

"Well it does give off a similar energy signature," Wasp mused "we could work on it, see if we can't use it as a tracker of sorts."

"So Excalibur can help the kidnapped mammals." Arthur uttered.

Olivia nearly choked on her sweet treat before snorting "Excalibur? Talk about cliché."

"Seriously Olivia? Stop making jokes." Iron Heart judged, still comfortable with her head laid on Brawn's muscles.

Arthur ignored the spat and clarified "I know it's called Excalibur, I can feel it."

"Arthur by name, Arthur by nature?" Wasp enquired, unconvinced.

"Arthur may be correct in his feelings." Viv voiced her support for Arthur's reasoning "We all know that are endless amounts of dimensions, with some similarities popping up between some. I offer a theory; what if this is sword is the real Excalibur? What if Arthur Knight, a police officer from Zootopia is his universe's King Arthur?"

There was a spell of silence around the lab table, all of them were considering Viv's theory as a strong possibility, all except one; Arthur himself "Just get working on the tracker, the sooner we find the rift, the sooner all those mammals can go home." the wolf stated before walking out of the room, he needed some fresh air and time to gather his thoughts.

The briefly mute tech heads went straight back to discussing ideas for tracking rifts after a moment while beside Jason, Scarlet and Bullet was a stressed Ms Marvel, frantically trying to get a cracked SHIELD tablet to work "Please still work, please still work, please still work." she begged.

"Is that your tablet?" Scarlet asked, dipping a fried chicken thigh in a tub of gravy.

"No, that's why I want it to not be broken." Ms Marvel freaked "Coulson gave it to me for a project I'm working on but I dropped it when the drones attacked."

"What kind of project?" Bullet asked, the gunslinger wondering why she would need government equipment.

"Well I started thinking after what happened on the Jersey subway that The Champions' ranks are too small, we need more young heroes to join the fight." Ms Marvel answered, gasping slightly when the screen lit up "Thank the stars, it works!"

"You're doing a recruitment drive?" Scarlet figured, passing Jason a portion of fries.

"Yeah, this tablet has the details on some young heroes across the globe, I'm cherry picking the ones that share The Champions' ideals." Ms Marvel confirmed, swiping at the tablet's screen and delighted to see that she had some replies from potential new members.

"So any luck?" Bullet wondered, picking up some popcorn chicken and tossing them in her mouth.

"Well Honey Badger has to ask her big sister first but Bombshell, the new Falcon, Patriot and Locust are interested. There's this kid from Delhi; Pinpoint who's begging to join us." Ms Marvel listed, typing away messages to the possible new recruits.

"Maybe we should recruit some powered mammals when we get back to Zootopia." Scarlet commented, still munching on her food "How about it, Jason? Want to join to Ceartais when you're older?"

"Me?" Jason asked, sounding stunned "But I get scared easily."

"Being scared is part of being a hero, me and Scarlet get scared all the time." Bullet chipped in.

Jason had been told this before from Arthur but hadn't believed it, hearing this from a hero changed that "Me as a hero?" He mused, going back to his junk food.

In the corner of the room the unmasked Kodi and the powered down Kion were tending to the very downtrodden Clara. "Clara, we know you're upset but you helped with the rescue operation, lives were saved with your help." Kion offered, the kind lion was wearing a SHIELD t shirt after ripping his regular one during the attack.

"You guys would've still saved them, I got in the way and made an ass of myself." Clara digged at herself.

Kodi took hold of Clara's paw and gave it a comforting squeeze while saying "Listen when me, Scarlet and Bullet tried our first attempt at hero work it went terrible, Spitfire had to save us. So I know how you're feeling right now, you've just got to practice like we did."

"I know and the logical part of me wants to accept this and try again but I still feel like an idiot." Clara fussed.

"Listen we've been heroes for five years and we still feel like idiots when we mess up, but getting back up is the important thing." Kion encouraged.

"Birds don't just fly, they fall down and get up. Nobody learns without getting it wrong." Kodi smiled, knowing his girlfriend would get the reference.

Clara's glum expression quickly transformed to a smile as she chuckled "Did you just quote Gazelle? Are you really using your Mom's song to prove a point? God, you're a dork."

"It made you smile, so it was worth it." Kodi said, pulling her into a hug "Plus hugs make everyone feel better."

"True." Clara sighed happily, melting into the embrace.

Kion saw this and decided to go one step further and announced loudly "Everybody hug Clara! She needs cheering up!" The big cat then wrapped his arms around both canines and soon enough everyone else the room came and joined the massive group hug, even the meek Jason.

000

The small group tracking Ronin and Andi had reached the junk yard and found the exact spot where the villainesses car had been parked. Alice was on one knee, touching the tire marks in the dirt and assessed "They left in a regular sized family car, my bet Is a sedan, the worms and bugs in the dirt are already crawling around in the tracks meaning they've been gone at least twenty minutes." she then stood up and looked at the nearby bridge off Manhattan "They chose this spot for a reason, to get off the island quickly, they're heading east, most likely towards Queens."

"Then let's check this yard's security cameras and find out what car they were in." Luna suggested, her bow still gripped in her paw.

"Don't bother," Spiderman cut in, looking around "I'm seeing no cameras in this place."

"That's likely by design." Alice pointed out, looking over at some rather unscathed parked cars in the yard "I bet criminals use this place to stash getaway vehicles, the owner turns a blind eye in return for a fee."

"But can't we use traffic cams on the bridge to look for Andi and Ronin in a car?" Snowguard asked, the teen still had her angelic wings formed on her back.

"We can try but I bet we won't find anything, if it was me I'd have new clothes and disguises ready to avoid detection." Alice guessed.

Luna's amber eyes were aimed at the ground, a speck of blood was close to the tyre tracks, Andi's blood. The cut from the arrowhead must've been deep to cause it to bleed for so long, it would surely leave a scar but Luna wasn't satisfied with scarring Andi "So the trail's cold...damn it." She growled lowly.

"We'll find them, Luna. Creeps like those two never stay out of trouble for long." Spiderman assured, the web head was perched atop a dilapidated ice cream truck.

"But Andi needs to be stopped, before she hurts anyone else." Luna seethed, gaining a concerned look from Alice.

"And Ronin." Snowguard reminded.

Luna seemed to snap back into focus "Yeah, her to." she mumbled.

Alice's suspicion had peaked she took a step towards her wife and questioned " _Mon Amour,_ what's with your sudden urgency to find Andi?"

"She's the bad guy, we're the heroes. You know, that's what we do." Luna dodged.

Alice's eyes narrowed, clearly unsatisfied with the answer "Is this about Captain America?"

Luna felt a twinge of guilt before answering "Of course this is about Steve."

Alice fiddled with the red feather on her katana's handle and sighed "Luna, I know you want to get justice for him but we need to be careful about this, if we rush in angry we are more likely to lose."

Luna took offence and bickered "That 'We' seems to be aimed at me."

"Um, should we leave you guys to it?" Snowguard asked, feeling awkward.

Alice ignored Snowguard and kept her focus on the vixen "I mean we. Listen all of us are at risk here, our kits are at risk every second we stay in this universe, so I want to find them as much as you but we have to keep our minds clear and unclouded by anger." she replied forcefully.

"Don't you use the babies against me." Luna argued.

"I will use them, because I want you to be there to raise them and not in an urn because you got too reckless." Alice snapped, poking at Luna's chest.

Luna was about to respond but in the corner of her eye she a glint of metal flying towards the doe, she pulled Alice out of the way and shielded her wife her body, the fox caught the sight of an s shaped blade whirling past them.

"What the?!" Spiderman gasped, before his spider sense kicked in "Luna look out!"

A figure darted at the couple with unnatural speed, a figure draped in black armour and leather with a longsword in his hand. Snowguard leapt into action and grabbed Alice from Luna before soaring into the air, as soon as the bunny was out of her grip Luna ducked to avoid the first swipe of the sword before rolling away and firing a brace of arrows at the attacker, who sliced through the arrows like grass and was about to stab the vixen but was stopped by a kick to the face from Spiderman.

The attacker was brought to the ground while Luna drew a tazer arrow, ready for another offence from the mystery man but before he could rise to his feet he was webbed to the floor by Spiderman. Snowguard had gotten Alice on top of a shipping container and finally got a look at the person who had attacked Luna and Alice and gawped "No way."

Spiderman knew who the attacker was, when he was a kid he had heard legends about this warrior and with his brief time in the Avengers he had learnt most of the legends were true but he still felt starstruck as he looked at the swordsman struggling to free himself from his web restraints. The black man looked to be in his mid-forties, with short styled hair and a trimmed goatee, his signature sunglasses covering his eyes and the unmistakable fangs could be seen as he grit his teeth with frustration "Blade?" Spiderman muttered.

"You know this guy?" Luna asked, ready to fire her arrow at the slightest provocation.

"He's an ex-Avenger, a hero." Spiderman answered.

"Well this hero just tried to kill my wife!" Luna growled.

"Not kill, wound." Blade replied before looking at Spiderman "You're the new Spiderman? Release me, now!"

"Not until you explain yourself." Spiderman stood his ground.

"Explain why you're protecting two villains!" Blade barked.

"Ugh, this again?" Luna groaned, lowering her bow.

"I don't what magic you've employed Andi but glamour spells won't trick me, I'd know yours and Ronin's voices anywhere." Blade said with spite.

Spiderman's eyes rolled under his mask and clarified "This isn't Andi and that rabbit isn't Ronin, this is Luna and Alice, they're from another dimension."

"Ronin was trained by The Hand, they use magic to disguise their forms and bewitch their enemies, like they've done to you and your team mate." Blade defied.

"They're not them, we're hunting them." Snowguard said firmly, flying down with Alice in her arms.

"And does Ronin have a cybernetic arm?" Alice asked, removing her prosthetic and holding it up to prove a point.

"...But your sword, it's the same." Blade said, starting to doubt himself.

Alice reattached her arm and unsheathed her blade, adding "The design is the same of course, but Ronin's sword is human sized and this blade is vibranium not steel."

"...Shit." Blade cursed, realising he was wrong.

Luna went over to Blade and cut through the webs with an arrow head "You should be saying sorry instead of shit." she said bitterly.

But Blade still didn't apologise, he rose to his feet and asked "What the hell are you all doing here?"

"Like I said, hunting Ronin and Andi." Snowguard sassed, disappointed with her first impression of the legend "They just killed over a dozen people at a SHIELD facility."

"Tough break but that's not my concern." Blade brushed off.

"Why you..." Snowguard began but was halted by a look from Spiderman.

"Blade why are you here? What does a vampire hunter want with a couple of mercs?" Spiderman questioned.

"Vampires?" Alice and Luna voiced in unison.

"Yeah he's a good vampire who hunts bad vampires, the day walker." Spiderman answered.

"The douchebag, more like." Snowguard grunted.

"Vampires exist? Like 'Bleh, Bleh, I'm Dracula'?" Luna asked, doing a stereotypical Dracula impression.

"Dracula's a punk ass bitch." Blade simmered before looking at Alice and answering "And I've got two reasons for tracking down Ronin and Andi; one I owe Ronin an ass kicking and two they're going to lead me to the biggest vampire nest in the city."

"What've Ronin and Andi got to do with vampires, wait is Andi's how blood high thing linked?" Alice asked twice, wanting to keep on the matter at hand despite her curiosity about Blade's rivalry with her human doppleganger.

"No but Ronin is tight with a vampire called Deacon Frost, he's got a massive hideout somewhere in New York. I heard the married mercs were laying low after what happened to Captain America, so I figured they'd go to Frost. My hunch was right, my informant told me they spotted two women matching their description parked a car in this junkyard." Blade explained, returning his sword to it's scabbard strapped to his back.

"A Vampire nest?" Alice mumbled "And I thought tracking them to an outlaw hideout would be difficult."

Luna didn't like Blade, he was rude, he was a brute and most significantly he tried to harm Alice. But she could use him to get to Andi "I have a proposal, Blade."

"And what's that, Swiper the fox?" Blade scoffed.

Luna didn't understand the reference but continued "We become hunting buddies, we pool our resources and hunt them together, once you have the intel you need for this vampire nest thing we get Andi and Ronin?"

"I don't work well with others, that's why I quit the Avengers." Blade refused.

"But who better to help you track them than their alternate versions? We can think like them and predict their moves, what do you say?" Luna convinced.

Blade was quiet for a moment before reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulling out a cheap burner phone, tossing it to Luna "If I find something I need your help with I'll call you." he said before marching away.

When he was out of sight Alice looked to Luna and asked "Was that wise? He doesn't seem that trustworthy."

"Oh I don't trust him as far as I can throw him but I do trust his hate for Ronin, I could tell that he really wants to get her, he'll do anything to get at her." Luna answered while thinking _And I'll do anything to get Andi._

000

Beast's eyes hurt, he'd been staring at the computer screen for hours, the hum of the multiple monitors in the room was annoying him and the clothes he had been wearing since his kidnap were ripe with body odour. But he couldn't stop, he knew what was at risk.

His prison wasn't exactly traditional, it was an apartment with the living area converted into a makeshift lab, he could easily escape but he knew if he took one step outside there would be deadly consequences. To remind Beast of what was at stake his captors had set up a video feed of the Cauldron's security cameras, one feed of Nightcrawler and the other of the main communal area for the kidnapped mammals. The threat was simple; should Beast step outside the apartment Nightcrawler would be tortured with electric shocks and if he tried to sabotage Doctor Doom's work a kidnapped mammal would be selected at random and killed. Doom knew how to play Beast, the mutant was nearly sixty and had been a hero since his teens, there was no way he'd let innocents die. So the geneticist kept on working on the sequence to remove powers from the mammals and copy them into humans.

The sound of the front door unlocking startled Beast, he looked towards and felt a surge of hate surge within when he saw the sick grinning figure of Andi walk in. The villain was dressed in civilian clothes but did have her daggers strapped to her belt "Good afternoon, Dr McCoy." she greeted.

"Andi." He replied curtly "Come to inspect me for your master?"

"Oh Doctor Doom knows that you'll be a good little fuzzball and do what you've been instructed to do." Andi smiled, walking past all the out of place lab equipment and over to the window, cracking it open to let in some much needed fresh air.

"Then why are you here?" Beast asked, taking off his glasses.

"To tell you to hurry up, Doom's picked a new test subject. You've had over a week to work on this, so it's time to show your work." Andi answered.

"A week?" Beast asked, sounding confused "I've only been here a day."

"Oh yeah, I always forget that time moves differently in Zootopia." Andi replied, looking over Savannah central from the high rise apartment.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Beast is in Zootopia!? Luna wants to team up with Blade?! What did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on TBM; Coulson has a surprise for the heroes, Esso steps up to help Rocket and Luna & Clara seek help with some new gear. Please review and c ya soon...)


	37. Good Friends, Old Friends and

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. As always thank you for all your support with reviews, reblogs, likes, faves and follows. Be sure to follow me on Twitter look for FoxCrewe to see fanart, official art for the series and sneak peeks of new projects from me and the other amazing members of the dev team. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter.

 **Chapter 36 Good friends, old friends and temporary friends**

The SHIELD safehouse was compromised both from a security perspective and structurally, the entire tower was now a crime scene with multiple law enforcement agencies sifting through the rubble making it unsuitable for anyone to stay there. But Coulson wouldn't leave the mammals hanging dry, he had organised some new accommodation with the help of Dragoness who had managed to convince Director Hill that this was a priority. Team Ceartais were told to head to the Champions' mobile bunker in central park with all their belongings including the crates of equipment, where they would be loaded onto the aircraft and brought to their new abode. Most of The Champions were already at the new location leaving only Snowguard, Viv and Brawn to help load all the gear into the mobile bunker.

"A vampire hunter!?" Robyn exclaimed, she was using her enhanced strength to carry a chest of micro missiles and tranq darts for Olivia's mech.

"Yeah and he's a world class jerk." Snowguard griped, securing cases in the aircraft's cargo hold "Growing up I always heard Blade was the coolest Avenger but he didn't care about the murdered SHIELD workers."

"Ok he's an ass I get that but let's rewind to the vampire part, are you telling me there's vampires in this universe?" Robyn asked, sounding amazed yet tired from all the strangeness.

"Well, yeah." Snowguard shrugged.

Robyn took a second to absorb this before ranting "Humans, Inhumans, mutants, synthezoids, aliens, magical beings and now god damn vampires...I miss Ceartais being the only freaks."

"Isn't your son psychic?" Snowguard smiled slightly.

"Yes but Aaron is the sweetest little boy in Zootopia, he'd never use his powers in a bad way." Robyn replied before sighing "God, I want to go home and see him...but we're here because of my mistake in the first place."

"And the mistake is nearly fixed, now we have Arthur's sword it'll make finding the rift to the Cauldron easier." Snowguard encouraged.

Outside the mobile bunker, Alice was sat under a nearby tree with her legs crossed, eyes closed and her katana resting on the grass in front of her. She was meditating, trying to rid herself of the stress she was feeling after her spat with Luna at the junkyard. Most rabbits found it hard to meditate, due to their overly sensitive hearing and that being alert was written into their DNA but Alice had been meditating since she was seven under the tutelage of her deceased master. Alice knew going into battle angry was foolish even if the skirmish was to be completely verbal, she intended to continue her argument with Luna and she was determined to make the vixen see reason.

Alice sensed someone approach her and sit down under the tree beside her, the doe knew who it was from the sound of the footsteps and the scent they were giving off "You know not to interrupt me when I'm meditating Luna." Alice said flatly, her eyes still closed and ears drooped.

"Even if it's to say sorry?" Luna asked, leaning on the trunk of the tree.

"Sorry for what, exactly?" Alice pressed, unwilling to let this drop so easily.

"Sorry for shouting at you, sorry for rushing in angry...you are right, I am angry about Steve's death, I feel guilty and I want Andi to pay...I guess I lost sight of what was important." Luna confessed.

Alice opened her eyes and looked at Luna, who was wearing a woeful expression but despite this sad sight Alice still said "I'm not apologising for using the babies against you."

Luna nodded and replied "I get that. I guess the reason I got so pissed off was because you were right. I was taking an unnecessary risk, I need to be there for our children."

Alice's stony expression relaxed, she pulled Luna by the collar of her top and dragged her cheeks against the vixen's, reaffirming her mate mark on her wife "I hate it when we fight." the bunny mewed.

"I hate it too." Luna sighed happily, relieved she was forgiven and savouring the touch and smell of her mate on her cheeks "I love you."

"I love you too." Alice replied happily, nuzzling into the red fur of Luna's neck while also feeling some tiny kicks in her tummy.

Luna could feel the babies kicking as she held Alice close, she took comfort in it but also a twinge of guilt. The surgeon had no intention of giving up her pursuit of Andi, she was still determined to kill the wretch but this argument with of Alice had reminded Luna of something vital; to keep a clear mind. If she was going to defeat the murderous mutant she would have to be better than her, to use her brains instead of her rage. Luna told herself that when Blade called her she would be ready to go into battle with a clear mind.

Half an hour later everyone and their belongings were loaded onto the mobile bunker, Viv and Brawn were in the cockpit doing the final checks before taking off with Kion, Olivia and Hannah standing and wondering where they were headed. "We best not be going to the other side of the country." Olivia grumbled from atop Kion's shoulder.

"Believe me, we're staying in New York." Brawn assured, he was acting as co-pilot and seeking permission from the city's air authority to take off.

"I hope the next place is quieter and less smelly, Manhattan is a little overwhelming from my super senses." Hannah commented.

"What I don't understand is all the secrecy." Kion called out "I mean, we're allies, aren't we?"

"We are but SHIELD is still a government agency and can't share secrets so brazenly, but this new location is well equipped for both our teams." Viv answered "I've already received word that Wasp and Iron Heart have begun working in the lab with Arthur and Excalibur."

"Damn, they've only been gone an hour." Hannah said.

"Come on, let's get you to our new digs." Brawn smiled as the permission off the air authority flashed up on screen, nodding at Viv to start moving the bunker.

The mobile bunker had only been in the air for around five minutes when Viv spoke into her headset "SHIELD Frigate A1, this is the Champions' mobile bunker, requesting permission to land."

" **Permission granted, Champions. Welcome aboard."** Coulson's voice came over the radio.

"Land? Land where?" Olivia asked, looking out and seeing only clouds and the busy city below.

"Just a little higher." Brawn spoke, within a few moments the mobile bunker elevated above some clouds and in front of them was a sight that astounded the mammals. A small aircraft carried was floating among the clouds with the help of high tech engines, there was a couple of helicopters and quin jets on the landing strip as the ground grew guided the mobile bunker to land.

"Oh my god." Kion gasped.

"An airship?" Hannah asked, detecting its massive shape and hearing it's powerful engines.

"An experimental hele-carrier a fifth of the size of her big sisters, a hele-frigate, she's a prototype meant for smaller missions instead of large scale warfare. Iron Man and Riri designed her, they named her the Kestrel." Brawn explained, loving the amazed looks on the mammal's faces.

Once the bunker was safely landed on the deck everyone poured out to be met by Coulson and Dragoness. "What do you think of your new accommodations?" Coulson asked.

"As long as I don't look over the edge I should be fine." Kion admitted, his claws popping out and retracting with nerves.

"This entire aircraft defies all the laws of physics, yet it stays in the air." Clara spoke with wonder "I must see your engine room."

"That's a restricted area, professor. State secrets and all that." Dragoness discouraged "But we do have a sophisticated lab that's fully operational, Wasp and Iron Heart are already working on a rift tracker."

"I know where we're going." Olivia decided, jumping onto Clara's shoulder "To the lab."

"Um, I don't know where it is." Clara pointed out.

"I'll show you the way." Brawn offered, leading his fellow scientists into the Kestrel.

Coulson looked at Alice and informed "Mrs. Wilde, I've assigned you and your wife a cabin next to sick bay should you require any treatment during your stay."

" _Merci_ Agent Coulson." Alice thanked

"Is it really ok for us to stay here?" Kodi spoke up "I mean a safehouse is one thing, but us staying here can't be cheap."

"You're right, it isn't cheap." Dragoness concurred before elaborating "But after the drone attack this morning Director Hill has authorised all available resources be prioritized to this mission. We can't prove it in international court but Doom launched an attack on American leaving fourteen SHIELD workers dead. SHIELD is treating this as an act of war and the only way to stop further bloodshed is to find the rift meaning we need Ceartais and Arthur Knight to be safe."

"Find the rift, get on The Cauldron, rescue the mammals, stop Doom's super army and get the hell out of dodge. Sounds like a plan." Robyn summed up, strolling over to the cargo hold to start unloading everyone's gear.

"Um, _excuse moi,_ but where is your bathroom?" Alice asked Coulson, hating that she was having to rush to the toilet a lot more since becoming pregnant.

"This way, Mrs. Wilde." Coulson replied, guiding the doe inside the massive aircraft.

Everyone else began to take the gear out of the cargo hold except Luna who quickly grabbed her bow and quiver before walking over to Dragoness and asking "I'm guessing you heard about my failed hunt?"

"I did but Blade is known for getting results, teaming up with him might pay off." Dragoness replied, keep her wings tightly folded in the windy environment.

"It better, we're running out of time." Luna sighed.

Dragoness glanced over at Bullet who was helping the others unload the cases and chests, she knew that the striped hybrid would hear their conversation so covertly said "I got word from my agents that all my files relating to this case were undamaged in the attack, at least we won't be starting from square one again."

Luna knew what Dragoness was alluding to, all the requested intel of Andi was still safe and their plan remained undiscovered, Luna nodded in acknowledgement and said "Well I best help the others unpack."

"Actually Luna, Iron Heart wants a word, just follow the signs to the lab, it's on deck four." Dragoness told.

Luna made her way to deck four, weaving around the SHIELD crew manning the frigate, noticing that she was still receiving puzzled looks from some humans. Before she opened the door to lab she could already hear a heated argument taking place, with a Scottish accent most prominent. Luna walked into the lab to find Olivia and Wasp (who was in shrunken mode) on a table with the sword locked in a shouting match with Riri and Brawn looking on, while Arthur was in the corner teaching Jason how to play chess.

"I'm telling ye' if ye' try and turn this sword into a tracker without an energy dampener it'll go tits up!" Olivia barbed.

"With a restriction of power how are we supposed to pinpoint an energy signature like a rift? We need all the power we can get!" Wasp threw back.

"Without a dampener, you'll blow up the entire ship!" Olivia raged.

Riri noticed Luna and was thankful the distraction "Luna, come on in, sorry about the noise."

The two mini engineers continued to argue as Luna asked "Is this a bad time?"

"Oh don't worry about them, all scientists argue." Riri dismissed, walking to a small room adjacent to the lab "Come with me, I want to show you something."

Luna obeyed and followed her into the room, the room looked a testing area for weapons, there were various types of guns up on racks and dummies for target practice, the vixen also noticed that Riri looked somewhat excited "What's got you smiling?" she asked.

Riri closed the door and gave a sly grin "Ok don't get mad but I maybe, sorta', kinda', scanned your body a couple of days ago."

"What? Why?" Luna asked, baffled by this opening sentence.

"Well not a lot of people know this about me but I'm into fashion, superhero fashion specifically." Riri grinned.

"Wait, did you design me a suit?" Luna clocked on, setting her bow down on a counter.

"Don't be mad. Just after you're whole ditching Andraste thing I got thinking that you might need a new outfit to go with your new persona so I came up with some possible options." Riri said, going over to a computer terminal and bringing up the schematics of various designs "I mean your last suit was bad ass but left you with no defence and that grapple belt was so bulky."

"Why have I got a feeling you've already started working on some of this?" Luna asked with curious smile.

"Well technically I started working on this for two other archer heroes, both named Hawkeye." Riri answered, going over and grabbing a weapons case off a shelf.

"Wait there's two heroes who are both archers with the same codename, doesn't that get confusing?" Luna wondered with a slight laugh.

"Clint and Kate are a bit odd, but they're legends in the hero world. Anyway I made some size modifications to better suit a fox and came up with this beauty." Riri replied, opening up the weapon case to reveal a high tech compound bow, that seemed to be folded up.

"Whoa." Luna mumbled, picking up the bow out of the case and pressing a button to unfold it "It's beautiful."

"Folds for easy transports, matched it to your DNA so if anyone else tries to fire it they'll be electrocuted and will work with all your current arrows except the grapple ones." Riri gave the specs.

"Why not?" Luna asked, still marvelling at the craftmanship that had gone into the bow.

Riri reached into the case and pulled out a single arrow with dark pink feathers and a fox sized utility belt "Because this is your new grapple arrow and belt."

"That belt? Where are the cables?" Luna queried.

"It doesn't need them, these connect via magnets developed by Stark Industries, one arrow can lift up to 250 pounds which is a lot more than vixen weighs." Riri told with a sense of bragging.

"Riri, these are amazing. Thank you." Luna reacted sincerely, hugging the engineer.

"No problem, but I think now it's time to pick a suit." Riri said, standing up and motioning to the screen.

Luna looked at the possible uniforms but let out a sigh when she noticed something familiar about the colour pallet, the suits were a mix of grey, black and pinkish purple "The Maid."

"Huh?" Riri sounded, wondering why Luna looked suddenly conflicted.

"The colour scheme, it's similar to my Nana's old uniform." Luna clarified.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't know, I can change it easily." Riri faffed.

"No, it's ok. It just seems kind of' fitting, I've been thinking a lot about her lately." Luna revealed.

"I still find it hard to believe that your grandparents are characters from a disney movie I watched when I was little." Riri replied.

Luna set her new bow down and walked over to the counter where her original bow lay, she looked at it and said "That cartoon got my grandad's character spot on, same with Little John but Maid Marian...she was nothing like a damsel in distress."

"Well she was a hero." Riri complimented,

"Only in death." Luna stated, making Riri frown slightly "Before that she was a vigilante, a master hacker and a murderer. It's only when her and my grandad gave their lives for Zootopia were they acknowledged as heroes."

"Did you have issues with your grandmother?" Riri asked carefully.

"I did, but I never let her know it. She'll never know how I simultaneously loved her and hated her." Luna unloaded.

"Hate? You hated your Nana?" Riri asked, a little shocked due to the fact that she could never think of her own grandparents in that way.

"It's complicated, when she gave me the chance to train under her I leapt at it, forging my path towards becoming a hero. I thought she did it for me, but she did it for herself, she was obsessed with her legacy. Nana made so many mistakes as The Maid, she was determined to set them right through me and Spitfire, she wanted me to be a better version of her." Luna said, picking up her old bow.

"But you are a hero, the others say you've helped save Zootopia." Riri replied, hoping to sway the conversation into more positive territory.

"At the cost of my mental health, Little John's life and laundry list of unforgivable things I've done." Luna nearly growled, gripping her bow tighter "All those mistakes are mine, it's a fire that will never burn out but my Nana was the one who struck the match. But if she didn't bring me into this life countless lives would've been lost, Zootopia would've been destroyed and I never would've met Alice...but it still burns."

Riri was shook, she knew Luna had struggled with her mental health but it was the first time she had seen the damage for herself "Luna, I'm sorry." was all she could say.

"Don't be, because my Nana is finally going to get what she wanted." Luna said with a stern expression, she handed over the bow to Riri "Can you use the materials of this bow and put them into some batons?"

"S-sure, shouldn't be a problem, but why?" Riri asked, caught off guard.

"Daggers were restrictive but with batons I can go all out." Luna answered quickly before pointing to one of the suit designs on the screen "That one, please. But can we add a few tweaks?"

Riri was surprised Luna was sounding like her old self again so quickly but it was way more preferable to her serious/depressed state from moments ago so she rolled with it "Tell me what you need and after this I can show you my idea for Clara's outfit." Riri smiled.

000

Rocket was feeling a familiar sense of guilt, he was sat in the cafeteria area of the general populaton deck eating his breakfast of turkey bacon and scrambled eggs looking over at Vanessa across the room who was checking on her fellow prisoners. Last night he and Vanessa had slept together, it had been great and both of them seemed to enjoy it but when Rocket woke up that morning he had a feeling of guilt whirling in his belly. He knew why he felt guilty; Lylla, despite his love being dead for over a decade she still had a hold of his heart and with every female he had sex with since came the uncomfortable guilt. His teammates in The Guardians of The Galaxy had all offered different bits of advice on this issue; Gamora had told him that he wasn't dishonouring Lylla by loving someone else, Groot had told him that Lylla would want him to be happy but of course it came out as 'I am Groot' and Quill had gave him the poor advice of 'Players shouldn't feel guilt'. It was only the brutish Drax who understood Rocket's guilt because he too had lost his beloved in a cruel way.

Rocket was pulled from his thoughts when Esso sat next to him and placed her food tray down on the table "Sup'." she greeted, already munching on some toast.

"Hey." He replied gruffly.

"And here was me thinking you getting laid would cheer you up." Esso smirked.

"How the hell did you know about that?" Rocket asked, more puzzled than angry.

"Oh please, I take bets on everything in this place, from who's going to commit suicide to who bangs who. FYI, you're not the only one who got some action last night, Regina and Harper finally did the deed." Esso gave a coy smile, using her toast slice to point out a very tired looking Regina emerging from Harper's cell.

"Yeah well, it was a one-time thing, Vanessa's a babe and all but...Actually I don't have to explain myself to you." Rocket started to reply before snarling.

"You're right, you don't." Esso shrugged "I'd rather hear about your next escape plan."

"What makes you think I have a fresh idea?" Rocket asked, taking a bite out of a turkey rasher.

"Because you don't look the type to give up so easily." Esso replied.

Rocket didn't reply for over a dozen seconds, chewing on a mouthful of scrambled eggs, when he swallowed them he finally responded "Ok I do have an idea and I need your help, I'd ask Vanessa but her ass is too fat for what I have planned."

"Don't tell her that, she'll tear you apart." Esso gave a small grin.

"Ok smart ass, less yapping, I'm about to clue you in." Rocket stated, his tone growing serious, nodding over at the food service machine on the back wall "Ok you seen that machine over there? We're going up the waste shoot."

"Why do you need me?" Esso asked, the lynx was already committed to whatever idea the racoon had she just needed the details.

"Because this a two person operation, see? I thought I could do this whole taking over the ship solo thing but I know when I'm licked, turns out I need to be smart and I need friends." Rocket answered.

"Aww, you consider me a friend." Esso teased.

"I mean it in the loosest possible manner, let's call you a temporary friend." Rocket stated before continuing "Anyway if we're going to take control of The Cauldron we need to learn the hours Tazerface is on deck, we need to look into the security logs and check his security clearance log ins for certain areas of the ship, that way we know when the piece of shit is asleep and when he's at the helm."

"So we take over the ship when he's asleep and the auto pilot is in control, great plan but there's one thing in our way; Doctor Doom." Esso said, finishing off her toast.

"That's why we've got to be sneaky, there has to be a way to open rifts on the bridge, hopefully we can open one before Doom even notices." Rocket said "Watcha' say kitty cat? Fancy a little trip to the upper decks?"

"...Sure, why not? Beats staying in gen pop waiting for folks to shiv me." Esso agreed, half joking about the shiving.

The two unlikely allies finished their breakfast without disturbance and as everyone else was finishing their meals and going about their normal business in this far from normal prison, the two smaller mammals went to dump their trays in the trash they jumped into the rather large space and pressed their limbs to the side of the metal duct, Rocket was the first scramble up while quietly cheering "Ha! All Xandar prison ships have these big garbage chutes."

"So why didn't you do this a few days ago, genius?" Esso couldn't help but sass, conscious of the fact that one mistake would lead to a forty foot fall.

"Like I said, cat, I needed a lackey to keep look out." Rocket replied climbing up the duct "Now quit it with the smart mouthing, just keep quiet and follow me."

"How do you know we're going the right way?" Esso had to ask, wheezing slightly from using her rarely used muscles to climb up.

"All Xandar prison ships are the same, the same trash bin for the prisoners is the same for the bridge, If we keep heading up we'll hit top deck and be in the main control room." Rocket answered, sure in his theory. After a few minutes of climbing, Rocket reached the top of the trash chute, he peaked his head through the lid to see that he was right, they had reached the control bridge and he was even happier to see that the pilot's chair was empty and the status screen attached to it was displaying the words 'Auto pilot engaged' in a Xandarian language. "And we have arrived." Rocket grinned, climbing out.

"Well I be dammed, you were right." Esso mumbled, clambering out of the bin "So what now?"

"I need you to keep an eye on that door, if you hear footsteps approaching or that security panel turn yellow, snap your fingers and we'll dive back into the trash hole." Rocket instructed, pointing to the main door before fishing out a napkin and ball point pen out of his pocket "Now I'm look at the door logins on the main computer, remember snap your fingers if you hear anything."

"Got it." Esso replied, focusing on the door and doing her best not to be distracted by the camera feed of what looked like New York but with odd furless creatures walking around.

"Alright let's see here," Rocket talked to himself as he typed away at the holographic keyboard "camera feeds, life support systems, defence shields, ah here we go security systems."

"You seem to know this system pretty well." Esso commented, her eyes fixed on the door.

"I've had to do this too many times, whiskers." Rocket answered, writing down Tazerface's door login times for the bridge "Ok so the slime ball stays at the helm for a fourteen hour shift then puts it on autopilot." But then his victorious expression melted away when he realised something "Oh crap, he hasn't logged out of this room today."

The unmistakable sound of a toilet flushing made both Rocket and Esso jump with fright, the cat's eyes shooting to a small door to her left that she had failed to notice earlier, the feline snapped her fingers just as the toilet door opened but there was no time for the prisoners to reach the trash bin without being seen so they both took shelter under the desk of the ship's navigational system. Tazerface closed the toilet door with a slam, the alien outlaw was singing a folk song in a bizarre language as he sauntered over and sat in the pilot's chair. Esso noticed Rocket gritting his teeth and balling his fists the more he listened to Tazerface's horrible singing, the feline feeling like the raccoon might suddenly leap out and attack the pilot. Rocket the noticed something, it was a screwdriver poking out of a toolbox next to the ship's main computer and the cogs in the raccoon's mind quickly began to turn. Esso read his intention and whispered "Rocket, don't."

Rocket seemed to ignore Esso, his eyes darting between the screwdriver and Tazerface, who's back was towards them, he let out a quiet snarl and began to step out under the navigation desk.

Esso grabbed Rocket by the arm "No, think about the others." she said with hushed anger.

Rocket was about to headbutt the lynx and make a dash for the screwdriver but was halted by an alarm from the main computer. "Ugh, what now?" Tazerface groused, getting up from his chair and waddling over to the computer, he typed in a few commands "Argh, the cooling systems again? Uh, I knew I should've bought a better model than this junk heap." the alien then picked up the toolbox and walked out of the bridge.

As soon as the door closed Esso growled "What the hell were you about to do?" emerging from under the desk.

"I was going to take that screwdriver and plunge into that bastard's spine and paralyse him!" Rocket admitted.

"And you could've ruined the entire plan," Esso seethed "thank god that alarm went off."

"You don't have to thank god," An unknown voice from above said, causing both mammals to look up and find a battered Indian flying fox hanging from the ceiling "thank me."

"Zoe!" Esso couldn't help but smile "You're alive."

"Barely, that last tussle with Doom messed me up." Zoe replied, spreading her wings to show multiple make shift stitches "When I saw this asshole about to creative with the tool kit I triggered that alarm."

"You should've let me go crazy." Rocket reacted, crossing his arms.

"Oh yeah and screw up the entire escape plan." Esso barbed.

"Look there's no time to fight Tazerface will be back any minute, you need to take these and get back down in the garbage." Zoe instructed, tossing Esso a pair of improvised comm links made out of spare parts.

"Radios?" Esso guessed.

"Yeah, I figure we'll need them if we're going to work together." Zoe said, crawling on the roof towards a vent "We'll discuss the next stage of the plan after lights out tonight."

"Who put you in charge?" Rocket asked bitterly, stomping over to the garbage bin.

"You did when you decide to act like a moron, now be a good little raccoon and get in the trash." Zoe smarmed before disappearing into a vent leaving a smirking Esso and even more pissed off Rocket.

000

Judy Hopps needed a drink. After hearing Ceartais' mission update from Aaron that morning. her mind had been well and truly blown. Nick was taking a day off to make sure Aaron got back to the children's home ok, only after taking his new grandson out to an arcade and some ice cream while the police chief had to go into work for more boring meetings. Lucky for her old friend and mentor Commissioner Bogo was with her for the whole tortuous afternoon of tribunals and policy debates with the police officers union. The last tribunal finished just after three o'clock in the afternoon and both of the bunny and the cape buffalo hurried out of the courthouse before they could be stopped by any of their underlings for anymore work. Judy offered Bogo a ride back in the cruiser but as soon as she started up the engine the subject of drinking came up.

"You are bad influence on me, Judy." Bogo huffed.

"Oh will you relax? Benjamin's on the late shift, your sons are staying over at their friends tonight and we haven't been out together in forever. We'll park the cruiser, go to the bar, get hammered and get Zubers home." Judy smiled, pulling onto a busy street.

"Just like old times." Bogo replied with the slightest of smiles.

"Anyway, I can show off photos of my grandson." Judy couldn't help but brag.

"I see you've embraced being a grandmother." Bogo said "I'm happy for you and Nick, I just can't believe Robyn's adopting and Luna's going to have litter to care for soon."

"As soon as the mission is done they can focus on parenthood." Judy couldn't help but gripe.

Bogo was about to ask about the mission when the cruiser's radio crackled into life " **Dispatch to Chief Wilde, please respond."**

Judy picket up the radio handpiece and replied "This is Wilde, Dispatch."

" **Chief you know when you told us to report any pink 'Monster' sightings to you or the MCB, well we just got a call from an apartment building about a pink creature with ginger fur on its head going into one of the apartments."** The Dispatcher replied.

Judy's no longer had a need for revelry, she switched back to work mode "I'll check it out Dispatch, send me the address to my cruiser's computer."

"Pink monster?" Bogo repeated, confused by the description.

Judy turned on the cruiser's lights and siren before speeding down the street "Remember the attack on the MCB evidence lock up? It was done by a pink monster."

Ten minutes later on the other side of Savannah central, Judy pulled up outside a new apartment building that looked less than year old. Both the chief and the commissioner walked into to find a freaked out male hedgehog waiting for them in the lobby "Sir, are you the mammal who rang 911?" Judy asked calmly.

"Y-yes, officer, I'm the building manager. I can't explain what I saw, it looked like a thing out of a sci fi movie." The mid forties hedgehog rambled.

"Breathe, sir." Bogo instructed "Just explain to us what happened."

"Well all the fire alarms need to be checked monthly so I was on the 23rd floor making sure they work when I saw it...god I hardly ever go on that floor and when I do I see that, thank goodness I'm so small it didn't notice me." The Hedgehog answered before trailing off.

"Why do you hardly go on the 23rd floor?" Judy asked, thinking it was strange for a building manager to avoid an entire floor.

"Because the tenant requested it, he tips the cleaners and all the building staff to stay off that floor, claims he's got anxiety." The Hedgehog replied.

"Wait one tenant has all the apartments on that floor?" Bogo queried.

"It's not that strange, we're in the financial district and a lot of these apartments are bought by firms and used to house business mammals...but it turns out a monster lives on that floor." The Hedgehog shuddered.

"Ok, we'll check it out. What apartment did you see the creature go into?" Judy requested.

"D23." The hedgehog replied, passing the key to Judy.

"Thank you, sir. Please stay here and don't say anything to anyone, this is a police matter now." Bogo added, walking over to the elevator.

A minute and a half later Bogo and Judy stepped out of the elevator with their tranq pistols ready, they slowly approached apartment D23, it looked like a normal apartment and nothing in the hallway seemed out of the ordinary "Great, how are we supposed go in without a warrant?" Judy quietly sighed.

"Oh Wilde, you're still a goody-goody." Bogo grinned before cupping his ear and lying "Did you hear a struggle and someone saying help inside?"

"Yes, Commissioner Bogo, I believe I did." Judy smiled, her mind flickering back to the time she pulled the same 'Probable Cause' trick with Nick decades before. She unlocked the door and slowly opened it before calling out "ZPD! Make yourself known!"

They heard scrambling and rushed footfalls in the living room and Bogo immediately charged in with Judy close behind "Freeze or we will shoot!" he bellowed, ignoring all the computers and lab equipment strewn through the apartment.

A burly figure was in the corner, his face masked by shadow but Judy could tell the creature was wearing a tweed suit and a red bow tie "Please officers, you must leave, if she comes back and finds you here she'll kill you!" The creature implored, his voice refined but worried.

Judy sniffed the air, she could smell fur and the unmistakable mammal scent but something was off, she sidestepped towards the light switch while still holding her tranq pistol and turned the light on. But as soon as she saw the figure she gasped "Sweet cheese and crackers!"

"What are you?!" Bogo yelled, this wasn't a pink monster but it looked like no other mammal he had ever seen.

Beast looked at the rabbit and cape buffalo with a mix of wonder and fear before replying "I'm Dr. Hank McCoy and you're putting innocent souls in danger."

000

It hadn't taken Riri long to make Luna's new uniform, thanks to the Stark Industries advanced 3d printer that could make any outfit out of bulletproof materials in a matter of hours. Luna requested to be alone while she got changed, she looked at herself in the mirror and felt smugly satisfied. The colour scheme did honour the Maid's original outfit, most would say it was tribute but Luna saw it differently. Luna was going to take all the good and the all bad Marian Wilde had done and put it into this new persona, she wasn't going to execute her grandmother's will no more, she was doing this for her own ideals. Her paws traced over the grey Star of Ceartais emblem stitched onto the chest while her eyes fell on her left arm to a new addition she had requested from Riri; a small badge that resembled Captain America's shield coloured in black, out of respect. She knew Steve wouldn't agree with her plan but it didn't matter, Luna wanted Andi dead.

Luna pulled up the hood of her new costume just as the burner phone Blade gave her began to ring. She answered it and greeted "Evening, Blade."

" **Found something that might lead us to our mutual friends but I hate to admit it we may need The Champions' help first. Bring over Ms Marvel with you."** Blade replied, skipping the pleasantries.

"Text me the location and we'll be there in fifteen minutes." Luna said, going over to the workbench sliding her new batons into the loops on her belt.

" **Right...say what do I call you? Calling you by your real name during a mission is dumb."** Blade asked.

Luna looked at herself in mirror and smiled confidently "Call me Maiden."

(AN/ Reintroducing Luna Wilde as Maiden, what do you guys think PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Ok so kinda awkward after the whole break for the 3 funerals close together but the story won't be back until May 13th. Why you ask? Well my little brother is getting married and I'm the best man so I'm going to be super busy with Wedding stuff in the run up PLUS the wedding is abroad so for 8 days I'll be out of the UK and basking in the scorching heat of the Mediterranean. So please be patient with me, my brother and his soon-to-be wife have been together for 16 years and are finally getting hitched so I want help them have the most special day ever, FYI we did a stag weekend in spain last year and it was crazy. Anyway back to TBM; next time, Ms Marvel is faced with a difficult choice, Judy clues the MCB about Beast and Clara and Arthur are given a pep talk PLUS Vampires! Please review and c ya soon...)


	38. Honour the dead, kill the undead

(AN/I'm back folks! Yes after a two week break, a lot of alcohol, too much sunburn and a lot of partying I'm back from Cyprus and here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Thank you all for the lovely messages congratulating my little brother and my sister in law. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 37- Honouring the dead, killing the undead.**

Amadeus Cho was not a person who was not quick to become fearful, in his first three years as a hero he had faced terrorists, the brotherhood of mutants, the sinister six and even the mad titan Thanos. During those battles he had always entered them with his signature confidence and bravado, it was only when victory was seriously in doubt that fear would creep into his mind.

But right now the hero Brawn had gone from feeling chilled and content to scared shitless within two seconds. The reason for this sudden jump into fear? Alice. Brawn had spotted that the doe bunny was gorging on a plate of carrot and celery sticks with humus dip, he saw no harm in grabbing a carrot stick off the plate and dipping it but as he went to put the veggie in his mouth he heard the oddest sound ever; a bunny growling. Alice was looking at him, her golden eyes narrowed with anger, her buck teeth bared and her paws clenched for a fight. The rabbit was very small but very frightening "That's my snack!" she snarled.

"A-Alice?" Brawn muttered, surprised he felt so intimidated.

Then, as if by magic, Alice's face morphed back to her usual care free expression and she laughed off "I'm so sorry Amadeus, I'm very defensive over my food lately." The bunny was sat atop a table in the mess hall of the SHIELD Heli-Frigate with the other Champions and Ceartais members sat around enjoying some tea and coffee while the scientists in the group discussed the rift tracker.

"N-No problem." Amadeus replied, lacking composure.

Robyn let out a chuckle at the scene and commented "Oh Brawn, I've been around enough pregnant does to know you NEVER get between them and their food. I remember my Dad tried to take some blueberries off my aunt Heather's plate while she was pregnant and ended up with a knuckle sandwich."

"Noted." Brawn took the advice on board before turning to Alice and saying "I've just never seen you that angry before."

"Oh she can be a demon when she wants to be, she's the most feared member of Team Ceartais, most criminals would prefer to fight me than her." Kion pointed out.

"I'm not that scary." Alice replied, munching on the veggie platter.

"Alice, you made a bull elephant wet himself with fear when you walked into a room once, remember? He was so terrified of you he surrendered straight away." Hannah recalled.

"If you really want to see how scary she can be, try hogging the covers in bed, she becomes rage incarnate." Luna's voice came from the mess hall entrance.

Everyone turned to look at the vixen but were caught off guard by her new uniform. "Whoa." Clara sounded with Kodi giving a similar stunned look.

"Holy crap." Olivia uttered, the mouse was perched atop Snowguard's head.

"It smells different, does it look different?" Hannah asked, nudging Kion.

"Yeah, big time. She's showing no fur." Kion answered, thinking it was odd choice for Luna. The vixen had always been very body confident and hated feeling restricted with her movements during missions so the new whole body suit came as a little bit of a shock.

Alice set down her snack, hopped off the table and dashed over to her wife "That colour is beautiful on you, I love it." she cooed "You look so ravishing, you look gorgeous, you look..."

"...Like Nana." Robyn interrupted, hating that she felt a little freaked out.

"It was kind of the idea." Luna said, noticing her sister's discomfort she asked "Is it ok?"

"Yeah, it's ok...just a little weird." Robyn answered honestly "But I think she'd approve."

"Wait where's your old bow? Didn't Hood give that to you?" Kodi asked, sounding concerned.

"Right here." Luna answered, taking the batons off her belt and twirling them in her paws "Riri took the wood of the bow and put them into these."

"I also designed that badass new bow of hers." Riri cut in, unable to keep her bragging at bay "The suit is made of an extremely thin bulletproof weave which also keeps a track of her vital signs but my favourite part is the mask." Riri then couched next to Luna and pressed the centre of the Star of Ceartais broach, everyone was in awe as the saw a stream of nanites emerge from the star and onto Luna's face forming a silver and pink metal mask that covered her forehead, eyes and cheeks, leaving two eye slits that glowed amber, matching the vixen's true eye colour.

"You used bleeding edge tech for her mask?" Wasp asked, sounding impressed.

"I programmed the Bella AI assistant into it, a new comm link and HUD for better battlefield information during missions." Riri listed.

"Thank you Riri, it's amazing." Luna thanked yet again before turning to Ms Marvel and saying "As much as I'd love to show off my new uniform more, Blade's asked you and me to meet him."

"Ok, you got a location?" Ms Marvel asked, sounding serious.

"Looks like it's on the roof of a restaurant in Hell's Kitchen." Luna replied, passing the burner phone to the inhuman.

"I know it, let's get going Andraste." Ms Marvel smiled.

"Maiden." Luna reacted.

"Hmm?" Ms Marvel sounded, she hadn't heard the vixen but Ceartais had.

"My new persona is Maiden." Luna clarified, before looking at Robyn and adding "Nana always wanted me to be a better version of her, look like she's finally getting her wish."

Robyn didn't have a response, her body acted on its own as she went over and gave her big sister a hug, the hug lasted a dozen or so seconds and when it finally broke Luna saw that Kodi had used his sling ring to create a portal to Hell's Kitchen. "Have fun, you two." Kodi smiled.

"Try not to fan girl over Blade, Big M." Spiderman teased his team leader.

"Bite me, Miles." Ms Marvel brushed off, walking into the portal.

Luna quickly gave Alice a kiss on the lips before dashing through the portal as well, when the portal closed, Riri glanced over at Clara and grinned "Now Doctor Wilde has her new suit, how about you Professor?"

"You made me a super suit!?" Clara shrieked with joy.

000

Kodi's sling ring portal had taken them to outside a bodega on the edge of Hell's Kitchen, Maiden ignored the stunned New Yorkers and asked Ms Marvel "So how far away is the restaurant?"

"Just under three miles, we should get there in no time." Ms Marvel answered before stretching up to the bodega roof, it was just after ten at night and a cold breeze made her long raven hair flutter.

Maiden got one of Riri's new magnetic grapple arrows from her quiver and aimed it the drainpipe coming off the roof, she pressed the button on her bow and she was zipped into the air releasing the button just before she hit the building and landed on the roof with a roll "Lead the way."

Despite Ms Marvel's polymorphic abilities Maiden was finding it easy to keep up with the super stretchy heroine and it didn't go unnoticed "How the heck do you move so fast?" Ms Marvel asked, looking at the vixen parkour from roof to roof, only using grapple arrows for big distances.

"I've been doing this since I was your age, my grandparents taught me the basics but Alice really helped me up my game." Maiden answered, panting slightly.

"I like your new costume, pink suits you." Ms Marvel complemented, stopping beside a cell tower to get her bearings "I could never wear dark colours, they don't suit me. Sucks when it comes to stealth missions though."

Maiden landed beside Ms Marvel and said "Actually I asked Riri for a stealth option." The archer then pressed her finger to the black leather Captain America shield patch sewn onto her left arm, suddenly her entire outfit and mask drained of all the pink and was replaced with black.

"Ok that's freaking cool." Ms Marvel gawped.

Maiden pressed the shield again and her outfit returned to its grey and pink colour scheme "Come on, let's not leave the vampire hunter waiting." she urged, firing off another grapple arrow.

A few minutes later the two heroines landed on the roof of a family run Italian restaurant, happy conversations could be heard from within the building and the smell of good food made Maiden wish she grabbed something to eat earlier. "Um, Mr Blade, sir?" Ms Marvel called out.

"You two arrived quicker than I expected." Blade's deep voice responded, Maiden looked to where the voice had come from, Blade emerged from the shadows cast by a billboard "Ms. Marvel, Maiden." he said flatly, Maiden assumed this was the most polite greeting the swordsman could muster.

"Oh w-wow, it's really you." Ms Marvel gasped, starstruck by the legend.

Maiden smirked slightly at the fact Spiderman had been right in his prediction about Ms Marvel fangirling but could see Blade was not much for small talk and giggles so she pressed on "You wanted to run something by us?"

"I have a lead on Ronin and Andi's location, but there's a problem." Blade answered.

"Of course there is," Maiden sighed "so what is it?"

"It's better if you hear it directly from the source." Blade replied, walking to the edge of the roof before sliding down the drain pipe and landed in a back alley, Maiden got down the same way while Ms Marvel stretched down to the alley.

Blade approached a parked car, it was a jet black muscle car, he got out his keys to open the trunk while saying "So I heard a rumour there was a vampire in Hell's Kitchen with a little bit of money, anyway I scouted her address and caught her trying to leave her apartment once the sun had gone down."

"What did she say about Andi and Ronin?" Maiden queried, folding away her bow.

"She can tell you herself." Blade answered, opening the trunk to reveal a bound and gagged Latino woman in her late thirties, thrashing around and look at Blade with sheer hatred.

"Oh my god, Blade! What the heck, man!?" Ms Marvel exclaimed.

"What?" Blade asked, sounding annoyed at Ms Marvel's reaction.

"You've got a woman tied up in the trunk of your car!" Ms Marvel snapped, pointing at the struggling woman, she was dressed in yoga pants and a sports hoodie and wore thick framed glasses.

"Ms Marvel, she's the vampire." Maiden informed.

"What?" Ms Marvel scoffed in disbelief "Vampires are supposed to be mysterious, wear weird clothes and be scary. She looks like a Mom who's going to the gym."

"You have a lot to learn about vampires, kid." Blade grunted "Meet Alondra Renta, thirty eight year old pharmacist, married with three kids. Anyway Alondra here got a little bored with her hubby and decided to start having casual hook ups on Tinder, she'd be doing this for over a year until six months ago one of her Tinder hunks turned out to be a vampire, she got bit and was turned."

"So!? She's a normal person who got bit, you can't treat her like this!" Ms Marvel protested.

"You didn't let me finish my story." Blade spoke, fixing his sunglasses "Alondra here tried to fight the thirst in the beginning but after a week she snapped and went for the nearest human she could get her hands on, her six year old son."

Both Ms Marvel and Maiden let out a gasp with the vixen also prompting "Go on."

"She tore out her son's throat and drained him, there was no way he could turn after an attack like that. She hid the body, filed a missing child report and kept up the pretence of a grieving mother." Blade explained "But then her husband went 'Missing' and so did her two other children, she didn't even turn one of them, she drained them all and dumped their bodies outside the city, that's where I found em' and vowed to get them justice."

"Fuck." Maiden couldn't help but curse.

"Is there a way to cure her?" Ms Marvel asked, horrified by the story.

"No." Blade said with a hint of regret.

"But Jubilee! She's one of the X Men, she got turned into a vampire and didn't go crazy plus she's cured now!" Ms Marvel remembered.

"Mutants are harder to turn, they get the powers and weaknesses of a vampire but they don't go rabid like humans. And she was cured by the Phoenix Force and unless you can find that interstellar psycho there's no chance to cure Alondra." Blade told.

Maiden was saddened by the tale but pressed on "What has she got to do with Ronin and Andi?"

Blade reached to Alondra's mouth and pulled the cloth gag out of her mouth who immediately sniped "You just had to park outside an Italian place, didn't you? That garlic smell is making me want to hurl."

"Tell these two what you told me about the red head and the white haired ninja." Blade ordered before pulling a small test tube of blood from the inner pocket of his jacket "And I promise I'll make it worth your while."

"Give me that blood!" Alondra barked, drooling.

"Damn, woman. It's only been two days since you last fed and you're like this?" Blade smirked.

"Blade, she's an addict, she needs help." Ms Marvel implored.

Before Blade could reply Maiden spoke up "No she's not, she not Alondra anymore. That woman died when she decided to kill her son. Tell me Alondra, did he taste good?"

"...Yes...he tasted amazing." Alondra gave a sick smile.

"Any normal parent would never say that about her child, there's no regret there, no pain. She isn't the woman she was, she's a virus, she's the undead." Maiden concluded and even though these words made Ms Marvel uncomfortable, she agreed with them.

"Tell us what you know." Ms Marvel prompted, trying to look past the vampire's human appearance.

"Those two are staying at The Frost Rooms, Deacon Frost's hotel for vampires and demons, saw them take out some vampires getting on Frost's nerves a couple of nights back. Hurry up and give me that blood!" Alondra answered quickly, her eyes locked on the test tube in Blade's hand.

"Did she give you a location?" Maiden asked Blade, ignoring Alondra's plea.

"Yeah it's a slaughter house but underneath it is The Frost Rooms but that isn't all." Blade answered before demanding "Tell them about the cattle shipment."

Alondra would usually protest but she was hungry and the blood was so close that she answered "Ok so the guy I'm screwing works for Frost, he said there's a shipment of two hundred cattle coming into the Frost Rooms tomorrow at midnight. Look I told you what I know, now give me that blood!"

"Here you go." Blade said, uncorking the test tube and putting it in Alondra's hand which she chugged down with haste.

"Cattle? Why do I have a feeling she's not talking about cows?" Ms Marvel grimaced.

"Because she's talking about humans, Frost apparently brings in living humans for his guests to eat. If there was no human lives at risk I'd just go after Frost but I can't let those innocents get hurt." Blade answered.

"Which is why you want the Champions' and Team Ceartais help? To free the humans?" Ms Marvel guessed.

"We'll need two teams, one to save the two hundred humans in the trucks and another to go inside the Frost Rooms and save the humans in the kitchen area. The team inside also need to take care of Frost, Andi and Ronin." Blade explained.

"I'm on board but how do we defeat vampires?" Ms Marvel worried, feeling queasy as she looked at Alondra use her finger to get out the last drops of blood from the test tube.

"Easy, you kill them." Blade stated.

"What!? No, Champions don't kill." Ms Marvel argued.

"Did you not hear Alondra's story, she's not human anymore, she's isn't alive anymore, she's undead...Let me put it this way, if there was zombies would you think twice about killing one?" Blade asked.

"That's different, Zombies are brainless monsters who eat people." Ms Marvel replied, putting her fists on her hips.

"Then vampires are worse. They're monsters with a brain who eat people and feel no regret." Maiden cut in.

"Maiden?" Ms Marvel mumbled.

"I have no problem killing what's already dead and I'm sure my team will agree with me." Maiden said, looking down at Alondra with pity "I'm sure the old Alondra would agree with me too."

"Do what you gotta' do Ms Marvel, but if you want to save innocent lives tomorrow, be at this location at 11.30pm." Blade said gruffly, passing Ms Marvel a post it note with an address scribbled on it. "And before I forget..." the vampire hunter reached into his coat and pulled out a silver stake, Alondra was so obsessed with getting the last drops of blood out of the tube she only noticed the stake when it was plunged into her chest, a shocked expressions frozen on her face as she turned to ash.

Ms Marvel nearly jumped out of her skin at the slaying, Maiden put a comforting paw on the inhuman's arm and comforted "She's free now, she can be with her family."

Ms Marvel agreed with this despite her moral objections, she knew it was the right thing to do but she'd have to run it by her team first.

000

Jack Savage was getting tired of being told crazy stories, within the space of a day he had been told of an alternate world full of creatures called humans by his grandson Aaron and now he was before a blue furry mutant from another earth explaining he was the hostage of an evil version of Andraste. "I need a coffee." Jack groaned when Beast finished explaining his story, the senior MCB agent was flanked by his subordinates; Aleks and Lylla.

"This entire situation is getting more and more messed up." Lylla groused, finding the appearance of Beast a little unnerving.

"My little girl...oh my god..." Judy uttered, clearly upset by revelation of Andi.

"Judy that monster is not your Luna." Aleks comforted. The MCB agents had been called by Bogo twenty minutes before, as soon as they arrived the buffalo left for the nearest ZPD station to set up surveillance on this building.

"I know...but I can't help but feel sad about it." Judy lamented, she was sat on a desk chair fiddling with one of her droopy ears.

"Now that you know the situation I must insist that you leave." Beast spoke up, the geneticist was running a simulation on a nearby workstation "If I halt my work the lives of those mammals will be at grave risk."

"So you're just going to go along and help this Doom prick?" Lylla bristled.

"What would you have me do? Put my tools down? Fight Andi? The moment I do that Doom will select a mammal at random and kill them." Beast replied calmly, typing away.

"So we finally know why Andi was killing off mammals in this dimension; to weaken heroes on Dr. McCoys' earth." Aleks mused, glad to have a motive but disappointed that he was no closer to catching the killer.

"Your murder victims; Carol Danvers, Reed Richards and Tony Stark are known as Captain Marvel, Mr Fantastic and Iron Man respectively in my dimension." Beast added "I'm sorry the insanity of my world has bled into yours."

Judy looked to the camera feed showing the cafeteria area of The Cauldron, seeing the missing mammals eat breakfast and sighed "At least we know they're alive."

"And from what I heard from Andi and Ronin it turns out that two mammals have already escaped; a cat boy and a wolf named Bloom." Beast informed "They appear to have found your team of super mammals."

Aleks let out a rare smile "Professor Bloom can be a pain in the ass to her allies, I wonder what she was like for this Doom character."

Jack was deep in thought, he looked at all the science equipment and computers scattered through the spacious apartment and then asked aloud "How does a pink monster sneak all of this kit inside this tower block?"

"She's strong?" Lylla shrugged.

"No not that, if she had moved this equipment from somewhere in Zootopia she would've had to transport it and ask the building manager to use the freight elevator. Now the building manager had never seen this Andi person before today so how did she get all this stuff in here?" Jack asked, he was quiet for a few seconds before turning on his heel and marching out the open front door.

"Agent Savage?" Aleks asked, following after his boss along with the others, except Beast who was determined to carry on his work.

"Jack, what're you thinking?" Judy asked her old friend.

"You said that building manager told you that one person owns every apartment on this floor, right?" Jack asked back, looking at all the doors in the communal hallway.

"Yeah but I don't see how that..." Judy began but drifted off, her amethyst eyes going wide with realisation "Oh sweet cheese and crackers!"

"What?" Lylla asked, puzzled.

"We know that Camelot are guarding the purple cloud rift in the rainforest district so Andi couldn't have used that one." Jack answered, rushing to a door and opening it to find a piles of rations and water bottles.

"You think there's a rift here?" Aleks asked sounding sceptical.

"It makes sense." Judy half shouted, opening another door to see weapon crates.

Jack opened the next door and was immediately met with a familiar purple light "Bingo." he said with satisfaction. The other mammals joined Jack in the doorway to see a purple cloud floating over what looked to be a metal bowl with a multitude of wires coming out of it "Call Ray Kamino, he needs to know about this."

"On it." Aleks complied, getting his phone out of his pocket.

After a few minutes Jack, Judy and Lylla walked back into Beast's lab/apartment while Aleks was still in the communal hallway filling Ray in on the situation. Beast didn't look from his microscope while saying "Why are you still here? You know what will happen if Andi returns and finds you all here."

"We're aware Dr McCoy. That's why we're leaving but we're keeping this place under surveillance." Judy replied.

"I don't like it but it's the only way those mammals will be safe." Jack griped.

"Thank you, believe if there was a way I could help, I would." Beast sighed.

"Oh you're helping us blue boy." Lylla stated, walking over to the much taller creature and passing him a smartphone "Keep that phone on you, if Andi's plan changes or if she brings a mammal for you to extract powers from, you call the number I stored in contacts."

"...Ok." Beast begrudgingly agreed taking the phone and putting it in his blazer.

"We'll get you home Doctor, we promise." Judy said sincerely, before walking out of the apartment.

"You're a good guy, doc." Jack encouraged, following Judy out.

Lylla went to join the others but as she turned she caught a glimpse of camera feed coming from The Cauldron and her eyes were drawn to one figure, a scruffy looking male raccoon chatting to a lynx, a horse, a stag and another raccoon. She stepped closer to the monitor, mouth agape and paws trembling as she took in every detail about the raccoon; his fur markings, his posture and mannerisms. Lylla knew them so well but she was baffled by what she was seeing "Rocket?" she whispered with tears in her eyes.

000

Ms Marvel went home to Jersey City after her meeting with Blade in Hell's Kitchen, the sixteen year old would usually stay up until 2am writing fanfiction or playing videogames but that night she was having an internal argument with herself; was it right to kill a vampire? She saw the logic in Blade and Maiden's argument but she couldn't shake off the sense of guilt that clung to this decision. Foolishly she googled Alondra and found multiple news articles on the Daily Bugle's website about the deaths in her family, when she saw a family photo of the Rentas she couldn't help but sob a little. They looked like a normal family but the vampire virus had taken all of them in one way or another, she thought about Alondra and if the 'real' her was stuck inside that monster's body unable to control her murderous hunger. It was thought that stayed with Kamala Khan until she fell asleep.

The next day Kamala arrived on the Kestrel Hele-frigate shortly after 2pm, she had spent the morning babysitting her nephew while hanging out with some of her friends from school. When her brother had come back from his duties at the local mosque she passed back her nephew, got changed into her Ms Marvel costume and messaged Kodi to make a sling ring portal for her up to the aircraft. When she summoned all the Champions members for a meeting she was surprised that Maiden hadn't filled them on the details, the vixen later telling her that she didn't want to influence their decision over the whole vampire issue, the team leader told them about the mission and what they would have to do to achieve it. Instead of arguing Ms Marvel decided to put it to an anonymous vote, they would write down on a scrap of paper for yay or nay to kill the undead horrors then put them in a hat and then it would be counted. When it was tallied up it was four yays against two nays, the Champions were prepared to kill the vampires. Riri and Amadeus got to work straight away on weapons to use against the undead monsters leaving only Wasp, Clara and Olivia to work on the rift tracker.

By ten pm the weapons were ready, the teams had been decided and everyone had a carb filled meal for energy but there was still time before they had to leave but Robyn was not one for sitting still when she had finished her meal she looked over at Arthur and challenged "Hey Knight, time for a training session."

Arthur had tried to protest but as soon as Clara heard about a possible training session she begged to join in too, as soon as she got changed into her new super suit. And now much to Arthur's annoyance he was outside on the flight deck of the Kestrel, on a chilly night and with a full belly ready to spar with an experienced super hero while the entire of Team Ceartais and The Champions looked on along with Dragoness and Jason (Who was wearing an oversized SHIELD sweater to keep warm, Alice's maternal instincts had kicked in and the bunny made sure the boy wrapped up warm).

Robyn was to be Arthur's sparring partner and Viv was to be Clara's. "The purpose of this exercise is to test your combat prowess, if we can get an idea of your current fighting ability it'll be easier to teach you." Viv explained to the two wolves before her.

"Basically we're going to let you come at us and see how much you suck." Robyn sniggered, doing some warm up stretches.

"I am a cop Robyn, I've had hand to hand training." Arthur huffed, crossing his arms.

"We will strike you if you make too foolish a move, so please be ready for a strike Arthur, Clara." Viv warned.

"Sirius!" the she-wolf sang "When I'm in outfit call me by my hero name." Clara's outfit was a lot different than the other heroes, the main body of the uniform looked a one piece purple and gold swimsuit with the Star of Ceartais emblem on the bust complete with matching gloves and thigh high stockings. Her face was hidden by a simple purple domino mask and the look was topped off with a purple aviator scarf.

"My apologies, Sirius." Viv bowed but then noticed that one of the spectators was looking a little too intently at Sirius "Kodi stop staring at Sirius' behind."

"Not happening." Kodi smiled, his brown eyes locked on his girlfriend's butt which looked extra shapely in her hero uniform.

"Kodi, bubby. If you quit staring I'll wear this to bed tonight." Sirius teased her lover with a wink.

"Eyes pointed up." Kodi reacted, his tail wagging.

"Great, another night of howling." Kion groaned, envious of their intimacy, he wanted to hold Jasiri close again.

"Ok less talk about butts and more butt kicking." Robyn rallied, she looked up at Arthur and dared "Come at me, bro."

Arthur knew he would probably lose this bout but he knew he'd never hear the end of it if he backed out, he tried to sweep kick the red clad hybrid but she backflipped out of the way with a cocky laugh that grinded on Arthur's nerves. He charged forward and sent a quartet of punches that Robyn easily dodged.

Sirius and Viv had taken to the air for their sparring match and like her fellow wolf she had been unable to land a hit despite going at Viv with all she had "If you're not careful I'll blast you!" Sirius panted between punches she finished off with an attempted upper cut but Viv simply moved out of the way before jabbing Sirius twice in the abdomen.

"You energy blast me and I'll energy blast you, who do you think would win?" Viv asked seriously but Sirius never gave an answer, she just went in for another attack.

Arthur was still having no luck, Robyn was too quick and too acrobatic to land a hit on, when he over extended on a punch he caught a mischievous glint in Robyn's blue eyes, she was sending in a punch to his right cheek. Arthur acted on impulse and tapped into his powers to stop Robyn's fist just before she connected with his face, Robyn's shock at her sudden stop gave Arthur a little smile...but he forgot about her other fist, he was sent clattering to the floor with a blow to his right cheek.

"Get up, I only used 5% of my strength." Robyn willed, able to move her frozen arm again.

"Easy, Robyn. You're only training." Dragoness advised, the winged inhuman was actually impressed by Arthur.

Robyn waved off the SHIELD agent and crouched down to the wolf and cooed "What's up blue?"

"What's your problem with me?" Arthur snarled getting to his feet.

"Oh a lot of things but I still haven't forgiven you for shouting at my son." Robyn answered candidly "You're forever on my shit list."

"...That's it? I apologised for that, you dangled me out over a balcony for that!" Arthur barked, throwing some more punches at Robyn who didn't dodge them, she blocked them instead.

"I just trying to figure out why Mom puts you up on a pedestal, she says you're one of her best, so far I've seen nothing that justifies that." Robyn wounded.

"Princess." Hannah warned, she was sat on a cargo crate.

"You want justification!?" Arthur snapped.

"Ok, fight over you two." Olivia called out, not wanting it to escalate.

"You'd still be in that cell if it wasn't for my wife and Viv, they helped you escape, all that power and you can't even rescue yourself." Robyn smirked.

"Robbie, can it." Luna said with authority.

Robyn was about to back off but Arthur simmered "Before I even came to America, I lost everything. Then when I became a cop in Zootopia, I lost my dream job because of that damn purple cloud."

"Uh, Knight..." Robyn sounded

"Then I lost my friends, one by one they were taken by Doom and while this whole nightmare is going on I have to deal with this Seren shit I can barely remember from my childhood." Arthur rambled, his face locked in frustration.

"Arthur." Alice tried to grab his attention.

"Then the cherry on top is not one of you ungrateful bastards say thank you to me for saving Jason, Alice and her unborn kits. Those two thanked me after pull but not one of you even attempted to say it." Arthur yelled, unaware that his fur was pulsing with a blue colour.

"Arthur, your paw." Jason called out.

Arthur finally snapped out of his rant, he looked down at his right hand and nearly choked when he saw Excalibur gripped in it "When...how?" He gasped.

"When you started shouting the sword appeared in your hand like magic." Robyn explained.

Arthur knew he should feel amazed but he wasn't, he was frustrated "This stupid sword, bursts out of my chest, destroys one drone and that's it, it's useless!" He barked "It can't even find the bloody rift!"

At that moment the huge sword wrestled free of Arthur's grip, it floated it the air for a second stunning everyone before shooting off at about fifty miles per hour off the flight deck and into the night sky. "What!?" Arthur crowed.

"I'll get it!" Sirius volunteered, powering up and chasing the sword.

"Dude I think the sword just listened to you." Wasp gawped.

"We need to go after it!" Kodi said, about to use a flying spell.

"No, we need to help Blade." Luna reminded.

Before Arthur could react he was grabbed by the collar of his jacket and was being dragged to a SHIELD quinjet by Dragoness who yelled "We'll take care of Excalibur, you take care of the vampires!"

"But what about Jason?" Arthur worried, still being dragged.

"Don't worry, me and Alice are going to watch anime and eat ice cream." Jason assured.

There was no point in protesting, Arthur was going to have to chase Excalibur but he wasn't happy about it "Stupid sword." he groused.

(AN/ Dun dun dun! Excalibur has done a runner?! What did you guys think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on TBM; Sirius, Arthur and Dragoness chase Excalibur, the liberation of The Frost Rooms begins and Maiden makes Andi an offer she can't refuse. Please review and c ya soon...)


	39. The Challenge

(AN/ Hey Folks, it's Garouge/Crewefox with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Thank you to everyone who has left such nice reviews, comments and likes since the last update. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 38- The Challenge**

Robyn always loved this part of the job; suiting up. No matter how many times she got dressed into her Scarlet uniform, she still got the same rush of excitement that she had experienced the first time she wore it back when she was fifteen. The ginger furred hybrid was in the armoury of the Kestrel, getting ready before they had to meet up with Blade for the Frost Rooms mission. She glanced at herself in the mirror and gave a satisfied grin, she always liked how badass she looked.

"And you used to call me a narcissist." Kodi jibed, waving his left paw and clothes transforming into Mage outfit with a flicker of orange sparks "You look at yourself way too much in the mirror during mission prep."

"Kiss my ginger butt." Scarlet replied jokingly "Anyway why are you looking so calm? I expected you to be all jittery."

"Because of the vampires? I covered undead and demonic creatures with Doctor Strange during my training, I know how to kill them." Mage answered, calibrating the HUD in his domino mask.

"No I mean about Clara, she's in her Sirius suit for five minutes and she's off chasing a magical sword to god knows where with Dragoness and Knight." Scarlet corrected, she was genuinely worried for Clara as she had grown rather fond of her.

"She is a genius physicist, has super powers and escaped from a prison ship controlled by the biggest bad in this dimension. Sirius can handle chasing a sword, her and the others will be fine." Mage said confidently, making sure to call his girlfriend by her hero name.

"Meh, I guess. But she's got that dead weight Knight with her, I hope he doesn't make trouble for her and Dragoness." Scarlet bitched.

"Ok quit it." Mage sighed, checking his trick cards were all ready.

"Quit what?" Scarlet asked back, but she knew what her friend was getting at.

"Giving Arthur a hard time, it's getting out of hand." Mage advised.

"So what? This a same species thing? You stick up for each other?" Scarlet tried to deflect.

"First of all Arthur is a different wolf species to me and Clara, we're Timber wolves and he's a Eurasian wolf and secondly this is not about species, this is about you acting like a jerk." Mage scolded in calm manner, sounding like a disappointed parent.

Scarlet was caught unawares by how mature her old friend sounded so defensively dismissed "Whatever."

"Scarlet I'm not going to the same old dance with you where we argue, you storm off and rage about it then we hug it out because we have a mission to complete so I'll just state the facts. You're being too hard on him, yes he shouted at Aaron but he apologised for it and you dangled him over a ledge, he's gone through a lot of stuff, he's still trying to figure out his powers and his past is a touchy subject for him. Plus he's right, he did save Alice and Jason when the drones attacked. So in turn he also saved your future nieces and nephews in Alice's tummy. Bottom line is you owe him some respect and an apology." Mage listed, knowing his words were working by the fact that Scarlet's ears got more and more droopy the more he told her the hard truth.

Scarlet looked away from Mage and conceded "Fine, I'll lay off him...and I guess I need to say sorry."

Mage just gave a small smile and nod in response before both of them walked out of the armoury and towards the lab where the all the heroes plus Agent Coulson had gathered. "Mage, Scarlet." Coulson greeted before addressing everyone "I'll be blunt, SHIELD cannot assist you in this mission, the whole vampire and demon thing is not covered by our jurisdiction, the only help we can provide is a safe haven for the rescued humans."

"That's all we need." Spitfire stated, the mouse was in her mech suit and ready for battle "Me and Ms Marvel have divided our teams best suited for each task and we've got enough weapons to use against a whole army of vamps."

"Garlic gel bullets for Bullet, UV blaster blasts for me, Iron Heart's sunlight grenades and of course silver stakes for everyone." Wasp listed, Nadia had her helmet off and was helping load extra sunlight grenades into Spitfire's mech.

Ms Marvel grimaced slightly as she looked at the silver stake in her hand and commented "The main objective is not to kill vampires, it's to save the humans."

"And to capture Ronin and Andi." Viv reminded, spinning the stake playfully on her index finger.

Alice who was sat with Jason in the corner watching the bizarre human version of Dragonball Z looked over at green haired synthezoid and noticed a few odd things; Viv was wearing a tank top instead of her usual sweater, her hair was tied back in a ponytail and around her neck was a simple silver cross. Alice's golden eyes lit up with nerdy joy "You look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer!" she beamed.

"Yes, that was my intention." Viv answered, glad someone noticed "I used to watch re runs of it with my brother Vin. How do I look?"

"Badass." Scarlet smiled, she had watched the show herself and was a fan of the ass kicking slayer.

"Wait you have that show in your dimension?" Brawn asked.

"Sure but in our world she's a sheep." Roar clarified, already in his giant white form.

"Growing up I had such a crush on her, that ewe was so sexy." Bullet mindlessly commented.

"Was she now?" Scarlet asked critically, arching an eyebrow at her wife.

"Well, uh, I..." Bullet began to ramble.

"Look enough talk about old TV shows, we have to get going, Blade is waiting for us." Maiden stepped in.

"Mage, if you'd do the honours please?" Iron Heart prompted before her bleeding edge armour covered her face.

Mage had googled the location Blade had given, he envisioned the meeting spot in his mind, extended his paw and used his sling ring to create a portal "Next stop, Queens."

Everyone piled through the portal but before Maiden made sure to give Alice a passionate kiss to which the doe purred in response _"Bonne chance, Mon Amour."_

Maiden was the last through the portal that closed as soon as her feet touched the cold concrete of Queens, The Champions and Team Ceartais were outside an all night diner before anyone could ask where Blade was he stepped out of the diner. "Right on time." Blade skipped the pleasantries, using a tooth pick to remove the remnants of the burger he had just eaten "I trust you've divided your teams up?"

Ms Marvel stepped up and explained "Me and Spitfire talked about and including you we have fourteen fighters. We'll split into teams of seven, the team intercepting the trucks with the humans on will be myself, Spitfire, Mage, Spiderman, Iron Heart, Snow Guard and Brawn."

"Leaving Maiden, Scarlet, Bullet, Roar, Viv and Wasp helping you inside the Frost Rooms to capture the targets and free the humans in the kitchen area." Spitfire informed Blade adding "Ms Marvel will be the team leader for the truck squad and Maiden will be the skipper for the Frost Rooms team but I'm going to guess you're heading straight for this Deacon Frost creep?"

"You guess right, tin can." Blade confirmed before looking at the strange mammal heroes and saying "Don't bother telling me your names because I won't remember them, oh and don't get in my way."

Scarlet then sniggered to Snow Guard "Wow you were right, he is an asshole."

Blade heard the insult but it didn't phase him so he continued "We best get in position, as soon as the trucks are in the slaughter house's yard you hit them blood suckers hard, with them distracted we'll infiltrate the Frost Rooms elevator."

Ten minutes later both teams were in position, with Ms Marvel's team sticking to the shadows between some shipping containers, the inhuman was still feeling uncomfortable holding the stake that she almost jumped a little when Spitfire suddenly said "Freaky."

"What is?" Iron Heart asked her fellow engineer.

"Check the heat signatures coming from the building, all the vampires have a core temperature of twenty Celsius." Spitfire answered, scanning the guards.

Iron Heart did the same with her scanners and saw cold blue figures which should've been orange and red "Damn they really are dead." she mumbled.

"That isn't the freakiest thing, that is." Mage shuddered, pointing at the sign above the slaughterhouse saying 'The Jolly Butcher' with a cartoon bull dressed a butcher with a cleaver in one hoof and a plate of steaks in the other "Why would a bull be a butcher?"

"Oh, I didn't even think about the whole abattoir thing. Are the others going to be ok walking into there?" Brawn asked, hardly believing he forgot such a detail.

"Depends, what sort of stuff are they going to see?" Spitfire asked.

Before Brawn could form an eloquent and less traumatising answer Spiderman blurted out "Headless pigs, sheep and cows with their guts ripped out and blood all over the floor."

"Dude!" Snow Guard hushed, swatting Spidey on the arm.

"Well he's not wrong." Iron Heart agreed awkwardly.

Mage tried to block the grizzly image of his head but then he thought about a very big hearted and sensitive lion "Oh god, Kion's going to blow chunks." he uttered.

"Or faint." Spitfire predicted.

"Hold up," Ms Marvel spoke up, her brown eyes narrowing "I see headlights."

Two seemingly normal looking eighteen wheeler trucks pulled into slaughter house's yard followed by two expensive looking BMWs which supposedly were the security escort for the cattle. Ms Marvel took a breath then said "Ok everyone, we all know our jobs. Watch each other's backs and make sure not to hit any humans in the crossfire." she then leapt from the shadows yelling "Champions charge!"

"Oo-de-lally!" Spitfire cheered flying out towards the trucks with the other heroes in her wake.

Brawn charged at the vampires clambering out of the BMWs. Before they could flick the safety switch off their guns the green teen leapt over them and headed for the gate, using his enhanced strength to pull it shut before Iron Heart welded it shut with a super heated laser "Gate secured, they can't escape." Brawn hollered at Ms Marvel.

"Thanks Brawn." Ms Marvel acknowledged, growing to twenty feet and picking up one of the cars like toys, she shook it and six vampires fell out of it.

Mage noticed one of the fallen vampires scramble to his feet and charge at him, the wolf smiled before opening his long trench coat and black hand made of mist grabbed the vamp and pulled him into the frozen void of space. Mage then clocked a few of the vamps trying to shoot some of his friends and over the pops of gunfire he grinned "Hey fellas, want to see a trick?"

"Shoot the dog!" One of the vamps, an eastern asian woman with a mohawk, commanded while levelling her gun at the canine hero.

"I can turn any old metal into silver!" Mage waved his paw and the metal of the vamps' guns turned to silver with a shimmer of light.

"Argh!" The mohawk vampire screamed, dropping her now silver handgun, leaving a distinct burn on her hands. Mage took advantage of her pain and closed the distance jabbing a silver stake into her chest, turning her to ash.

Spitfire landed beside Mage and threw a sunlight grenade at the other vampires that had been thrown from one of the cars. Two were smart enough to dive out of the way but the other three were caught in the blast of light, incinerating them instantly "Mage I need you behind the wheel of one those trucks and ready to make a portal when we give the signal." She reminded before chasing after the two stragglers.

"You got it." Mage complied, heading for the truck closest to him.

On top of one of the trucks, Spiderman was taking on two vampires with shock batons, the acrobatic hero was ducking and weaving away from the strikes with ease while insulting the vampires' fashion sense "Wow you two really went all in with the goth vampire look, although it looks like your make up was done at a slumber party." he barbed.

"I going to drain every last drop of blood from you, brat!" An angry early twenties vamp trash talked, he was still swinging his shock baton at Spiderman with no success.

"You'll become a child of the night like us!" The other goth vamp hammed up, Spiderman was surprised she could see at all with her long black bangs covering her eyes.

"Ugh, cliché much?" Spiderman groaned before turning invisible, the two vamps gawped with surprise for a moment before both feeling unimaginable pain in their chests. The last thing they saw was Spiderman reappearing between them with a stake in each hand, plunged into their chests.

The web head was trying to think of a witty one liner as they turned to ash but was distracted when he heard a collection of screams from below, he looked over the edge and saw that Snow Guard had transformed into a reindeer and had mowed three vampires down with her antlers while Iron Heart finished them off whilst they were floored. Snow Guard transformed back into her human form and called out "Spiderman, help me with these doors, we need to make sure the people are ok!"

"Right." Spiderman concurred, jumping down and ripping off the padlock for the back of the truck with ease.

Snow Guard went to open the doors but instead in slammed open in her face, hitting her to the floor in a daze, in her blurred vision she saw three vampire security guards jump at Spiderman and huge muscle bound vamp lunge at her. The vampire pinned both of her arms to the ground and smiled with fangs showing, she was so disoriented and scared she didn't have time to react, the vampire opened his mouth and went for Snow Guard's neck, she thought she was a gonner then he just stopped. The vampire's eyes bulged and a whimper escaped his mouth as her turned to dust, with his remains covering the Canadian from head to toe. Snowguard wiped the ash from her face and looked at her saviour; Ms Marvel was stood before her holding a silver stake, trembling and tears in her eyes.

"I...I..." Ms Marvel stammered, looking at the stake in her hand with horror.

Snow Guard saw her team leader and friend was struggling, she got to her feet and hugged the polymorph "You saved me, Big M." she eased.

"Guys, less hugging more saving. Check on the people inside!" Spiderman shouted, he had venom blasted the three vampires that had tackled him and was now taking them on with the help of Brawn.

Ms Marvel was brought back to reality when she heard someone croak "Help..." She looked into the truck and felt her blood run cold. The 'Cattle' were strapped to vertical boards held up by hooks, all of them wearing rags, painfully thin and had multiple IV lines going into them. Ms Marvel got into the back of the trucked and was met with the disgusting stench of urine and feaces but she did her best to ignore it and went to the closet human. It was a man in his forties, his stubble grey and eyes glazed over, Ms Marvel noticed the wedding ring on the man's finger and realised that this man and likely everyone else on these trucks had a loved ones who didn't know what become of them "They're drugged up." Snow Guard noted with pity in her tone, looking at the IV bags.

"We need to get them to SHIELD HQ now, they need medical attention." Ms Marvel stated, trying to remain stoic.

"Way ahead of you." Iron Heart replied, flying to the truck's cabin and ripping the vampire driver out of seat, as soon as he crashed to the ground Spitfire stepped on it's head with full force, beheading it and turning the undead creature to ash.

Iron Heart got in the driver's seat and shouted to Mage in the other truck "Time to get this convoy moving!"

Mage didn't shout a reply, he just spun a massive sling ring portal to the New York military base for SHIELD, big enough for the trucks to get through. As the engines rumbled into life Ms Marvel got out of the truck and looked at the piles of ash around her, she knew they had done the right thing but it still felt wrong to her. She took comfort in the fact that the team had already saved two hundred people and she hoped the team inside the Frost Rooms would be just as successful.

000

As soon as the other team heard Ms Marvel shout "Champions charge!" they moved into the jolly butcher abattoir, Blade led the pack and cut through the vampires guarding the place with ease, it's only when they were turned to ash that the mammals noticed their surroundings.

Bullet could smell the flesh and blood, thankful that she didn't have to witness the gore, even though she was distracted she fired a garlic gel bullet at a vampire charging at her with a crowbar, it hit him between the eyes and the garlic made his head pop like a zit "Where now?" she asked, determined to press on.

Before Blade could answer Roar had his paws on his knees and throwing up his dinner, Blade grunted with dissatisfaction "Never seen a vampire killed, cat?"

"T-the bodies..." He panted before throwing up again.

Scarlet had been watching horror movies since she was teen but the sight of slaughtered cows, pigs and sheep hung up on meat hooks made her feel almost faint "This is horrible." she whispered.

Even though Maiden was disturbed by the slaughter house she said "Pull it together, we knew humans were prey eaters but we have a job to do. Blade, where to?"

"There's a hidden elevator in one of the walk-in fridges according to my snitch." Blade answered, leading the group around the corner, he spotted one with an old nordic rune spray painted onto it and said "That one."

The door to the fridge was heavy and had three locks securing it, Roar wanted to be out of the slaughter house as fast as possible, he wiped the vomit from his mouth then stormed forward and the door off its hinges. Inside was an elderly vampire lady trying to work a control panel for the elevator, she looked at the heroes in panic before receiving a UV blast to the chest from Wasp. Viv glided over just as the vampire disintegrated and used her wireless hacking skills to activate the elevator, there was judder for a moment then the entire walk-in fridge began to descend.

"Ok, everyone state your roles." Maiden ordered, checking her garlic dipped arrows.

"I'm on crowd control." Roar answered, regaining a little composure after hurling "Their fangs can't hurt me, so I'll be taking care of any vampire trying to escape through this elevator."

"Me, Bullet and Scarlet will be raiding the kitchens, trying to locate any captive humans." Viv sounded off, spinning her stake in a very Buffy-like fashion.

"Leaving me, Maiden and Blade to capture Andi, Ronin and Frost." Wasp finished, the Russian heroine sharing a fist bump with Maiden.

"What I don't get is why the bug is with us? Last I heard, Ronin kicked her ass." Blade griped, twirling a silver three headed boomerang in his hand.

"She kicked yours too." Wasp smirked, when Blade shot her a dirty look she added "Oh yeah I read the SHIELD file, she took your title of greatest swordfighter in Delhi, right?"

"I'm getting that title back as soon as we rescue the humans and Frost is dust." Blade promised.

In last few seconds Scarlet's ear caught the sound of a familiar tune, she looked up at Viv was subconsciously humming the Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme tune, Scarlet got into a fighting stance and chuckled "Viv the Vampire Slayer."

"Huh?" Viv sounded just as the elevator pinged and the hidden door at the back of the fridge opened up to the Frost Rooms hotel lobby. Around twenty vampires were dotted around the lobby, furnished with antiques, marbled floors and the walls painted gold. In the centre of the lobby there were demonic waiters serving glasses of blood from the three slaughtered human dangling from the chandler into a blood pool.

The heroes stepped out of the elevator and the lobby fell silent, Blade looked at their panicked faces with glee, he unsheathed his sword and teased "Which one of you mother fuckers wants to die first?"

There was collective high pitched shriek as the vampires and demons ran at the heroes, hoping to overwhelm them, before they could attack Roar stepped in front of the other and unleashed a shattering roar that made the vampires tumble over and shake the room. While the vampires were trying to get their bearings after the deafening blast Roar prompted "You got your jobs, I'll handle these guys."

"Kick their butts, Roar!" Bullet encouraged, running to the east wing with Viv and Scarlet in tow.

"We'll rendezvous here, stay safe!" Maiden said before chasing after Wasp and Blade.

Roar returned his focus to the vampires, slowly rising to their feet and looking at the titan lion with rage. Roar's paw shot out and snatched a random vampire who was still dazed on the ground before addressing the crowd "You know I've been doing this job for nearly six years and I've only used my full strength once but right now I've got rare opportunity to cut loose and go berserk, because you're already dead." Roar then used other hand to grip the vampire's head then twisted it off like a toy, reducing its body to ash.

Even though they were scared the vampires ran at Roar, jumping on him and trying to sink their fangs into his flesh only to have their teeth shatter like glass, the giant lion began tearing the pests off him and using his claws to slice at the horde and his massive feet to crush them.

000

It didn't take long for Scarlet, Viv and Bullet to find the kitchen. Blade's intel was true, the service area and staff quarters were to the east of the Frost Rooms. "It looks housekeeping has a lot of vacuuming to do." Viv joked, having staked her eleventh vampire. The corridor's floor was caked in ash and blood from the burst bodies caused by the garlic.

"We need to keep moving, I sense people ahead, warm people." Bullet said, backflipping out of the way of an attacking vampire lobby boy and hitting him with a garlic bullet in the centre of his chest, causing him to combust.

"The humans." Scarlet figured, pulling a silver stake out another vamp's chest and eyeing a set of metallic double doors with the sign 'Staff Only' printed on it. She began to walk towards it but was halted when Bullet raised her fist, signalling for them all to freeze.

Before anyone could ask Bullet what was wrong a male vampire dressed in chef's whites scrambled out of the kitchen with a struggling human man in a head lock "Come any closer and I'll drain this bastard!" The chef threatened.

"Coward." Scarlet hissed, gripping her silver stake tighter.

Viv was about to attempt negotiating for the human's life but then a dozen other vampire kitchen staff poured out of the double doors and ran at the trio of heroines with meat cleavers and knifes in their hands. The chef took his opportunity and raced down a passageway to the left with his hostage still in his arms "Scarlet, rescue that human!" Bullet yelled over the carnage, dodging and shooting her attackers.

"On it, blind badass." Scarlet grinned, jumping over the crowd of kitchen staff and chasing after the chef.

The hybrid ran down the narrow corridor, weaving between crates of booze and cleaning trolleys as she did. She could see the chef at the end of corridor dragging the human into a room before closing the door. Scarlet increased her speed and leapt at the door, delivering a flying kick and bursting in open, the heroine landed in a darkened room but before her eyes could adjust to the darkness all the lights switched on, making her squint. As her navy eyes finally settled to the light, she looked around her and muttered "What the hell?"

She was in a room full of mirrored walls, it was a maze with branching paths and over the speakers an old creepy recording of 'Run rabbit run' was playing. "Do you like our play room?" The Chef's voice asked but Scarlet could not see him.

"What is this?" Scarlet asked, freaked out by the song and the setting.

"Some of our guests like to play with their food before feasting, we use this room to 'Hunt' our prey. It's so fun to watch the meat run around the little maze, scrambling for the exit but seeing as the walls are mirrors..." The Chef explained.

"They never see you coming because you have no reflection, kinda' sick if you ask me." Scarlet replied, focusing her hearing and walking down the path she thought the Chef's voice was coming from, she needed to keep him talking "What's with this freaking song?"

"It's just a little joke we have here, the meat runs around like helpless rabbits, I never thought we'd have an actual rabbit in here. What are you, anyway? A mutant?" The Chef asked with a chuckle.

"Nah I'm half rabbit, half fox and if you thought your fangs were sharp wait until you get a load of mine." Scarlet taunted, her long ears catching the sound of someone's panicked breaths, most likely the humans.

"That's if you can find me." The chef responded.

Scarlet knew he was close, less than ten metres, she was about to start running and hopefully catch the chef off guard when her eyes caught sight of something that overwhelmed her. "No...not now." She whispered. In every mirror there was a different figure, familiar to her yet also unknown. She saw variations of herself, some subtle and some drastic; different fur markings, different genders, more canine looking, different eye colours, different builds. Scarlet blinked her eyes trying to get the other versions of herself to disappear but they wouldn't. Then she heard them, multiple voices speaking in her head _Evelyn, Nicholas, Waverly, Isaac, Violet_ were some of the words she could make out in cacophony _"_ Names? That's what you're called?" She uttered, amazed but afraid.

Her navy eyes fell upon the mirror right in front of her and saw another version of herself, this one was dressed in The Undying Scarlet uniform but this one was clearly male. The male Scarlet was a hybrid like her but his features were definitely more fox-like, he had long ears with the right one having the recognisable grey fur of Judy and the left having the ginger tint of Nick, he had a long fox like tail with a streak of grey running through it and covering the tip "Jay-Tee?" Scarlet mumbled, knowing somehow that this was his name.

Suddenly Jay-Tee's face turned serious and his mouth moved, trying to tell Scarlet something, she read his lips 'Behind you!' Scarlet instinctively turned around and shot her arm forward. The silver stake had imbedded itself in the Chef's chest "Fucking rabbit..." The vampire cursed before crumbling into nothingness.

Scarlet looked past the ash to see the terrified human slumped against a mirrored wall "It's going to be ok." she assured, looking around and realising all the other versions of herself had disappeared for now. Scarlet said a quiet "Thanks guys." before going over and helping the human to his feet.

000

"They just keep coming!" Wasp crowed with frustration, shrinking down to avoid a duo of vampires tackling her, she fired UV blasts at them both killing them instantly.

"We need to get to Frost's suite, don't ease up!" Blade rallied, slicing through the vamps like blades of grass.

"Won't Frost try to escape?" Maiden asked urgently, using an explosive arrow to block one of the corridors vamps were pouring out from.

"Not this time, I've attacked his place of business, ruined his reputation, his pride won't let him run. He'll come after me." Blade grinned, pulling out a handgun and firing a silver bullet at a vampire trying to escape.

"You're right, Eric." A voiced cooed, the heroes looked to the end of the hallway to see Deacon Frost, Andi and Ronin facing them with two dozen other furious vampires behind them "I won't run."

"About time your skinny ass showed up." Blade smirked, wondering the best way to kill Frost.

"You think your new friends can help you win? This hotel will be their tomb." Frost blustered, holding an expensive looking assault rifle "And I have the greatest archer and greatest swordswoman at my side, you're outmatched."

Andi shot Ronin a knowing look before saying "Actually Deacon, I think it's time for us to check out."

"W-what?" Frost gasped, the other vampires looked surprised as well.

"Yeah we have a prior arrangement with Doctor Doom and we'd hate to disappoint him." Andi replied, keeping a close eye on Maiden.

"I gave you sanctuary and now you abandon me!?" Frost snapped at the assassins.

"You owed me a debt, the debt is paid and now we're leaving, _merci_ for providing us cover." Ronin said glibly before sneakily dropping a smoke bomb.

As soon as the smoke bomb ignited there was a mad rush, the vampires bolted towards the heroes, shots were fired and Blade began to do what he did best with Wasp backing up, UV blasting every vampire who was flanking the swordsman. Maiden ignored the chaos erupting around her, she used her upgraded mask to look at the heat signatures through the smoke and instantly spotting two hot bodies sprinting into one of the hotel rooms. The vixen didn't tell the others her plan, she used her short stature to run through the crowd, firing off garlic tipped arrows at any vampire who got too close to her. Maiden made through the carnage and ran towards the room Ronin and Andi had gone into, she entered the lush suite and followed a mechanical sound coming from the bedroom, she bounded over a sofa and raced into the bedroom to find a secret doorway behind a bookcase was ajar. Maiden cautiously stepped into the hidden passageway only to find Andi grinning at her from behind a thick glass door with a complex electronic lock on it. "Hi Mommy's girl, loving the new look." Andi teased, spinning a dagger in her hand "Don't think about using an explosive arrow on this door, it can handle any blast."

"Andi, let's go!" Ronin implored, she was strapping a backpack on, stood next to a ladder that led to the surface.

"Maybe you'll get me next time." Andi smiled down at the vixen, pointing to the fresh scar on her cheek from the arrow Maiden had fired at her two days before "You nearly got me back in Manhattan...So you want to kill me, don't you?"

"Andi!" Ronin barked, trying to get her wife to move.

"I do and I will." Maiden replied with a straight face "I want you to escape because next time we meet I want it to be just us with no distractions."

"Oooh, sounds delightful." Andi reacted, tempted to unlock the door and fight the vixen now.

Maiden reached into one of the pouches on her belt and pulled out a slip of paper and pressed it against the glass, written on the paper in biro was an address. "Meet me at this address in two days' time, 9pm, we'll settle this once and for all." Maiden invited.

Andi got out her phone and quickly snapped a photo of the address "Are you serious?" she asked, giddy with excitement.

"I'm challenging you to a duel, two archers walk in and one comes out. No tricks, no back up, no mercy. One of us will die." Maiden proposed.

"Oh Mommy's girl, you've just made my day." Andi smiled before turning around to join Ronin at the ladder "I'll see you there."

Maiden looked on as the villainesses ascended to freedom with a satisfied smile on her face. She had never indented to kill Andi at the Frost Rooms, only to issue the challenge, Andi's defeat had to be perfect and Maiden had planned it down to the last detail. All she had to do now was wait.

000

It didn't take long for the SHIELD Quin jet to catch up with Sirius, she was hovering over a church in Brooklyn. Dragoness landed the jet down on a nearby basketball court much to the annoyance of the locals, the inhuman and Arthur emerged from the back of the jet and were met by Sirius who had powered down and walking over to them. "Damn that sword was fast." Sirius griped "What's the deal with that thing?"

"Honestly I have no idea." Arthur groaned, he was getting sick of this entire situation.

"Did you lose track of it?" Dragoness asked, flashing her SHIELD ID to a cop car that pulled up to investigate, as soon as they saw her badge they moved on.

"No, it smashed right through the roof of that church." Sirius informed "But it's a weird building though."

"You just chased a magic sword through the night sky, how can the church be weird?" Arthur questioned, looking at the very normal looking church.

"No I mean it's not supposed to be there, I grew up in this neighbourhood, the temple where I had my bat mitzvah is just down the street. In our dimension that church doesn't exist, it's a carpet store." Sirius explained, creeped out by the human version of her home turf.

"Well there's bound to be some differences, I mean I'm a flying fox in your world." Dragoness reminded "Come on, let's grab Excalibur and get back to the Kestrel."

"But wait." Sirius stopped the two from walking towards the church "The sword flew off as soon as Arthur said 'Find a rift'."

"I didn't phrase it like that, I was pissed off." Arthur clarified.

"Regardless, Excalibur obeyed you, so what if there's a rift in there?" Sirius asked, sounding cautious.

"Which would most likely be guarded." Dragoness huffed, going back into the jet and taking an energy rifle off the weapon rack.

The unlikely trio made their way over to the church with Arthur using his powers to move the tumblers in the lock and open the front door. The church was dark and a thick layer of dust covered the pews, Sirius flicked the light switch only for nothing to happen "Dusty church and no power, I'm going to guess no one's prayed here in a long time." she noted.

"Well looks like the sword created a nice skylight, that'll put the property value up." Dragoness joked, pointing out the hole in the roof.

The three walked to where the sword had crashed through, Arthur noticed one of the stone pillars had a fresh gash through it "Looks like the sword hit this pillar before bouncing off and landing..." Arthur spoke, following the direction of the scratch and finding the sword imbedded in the stone floor next to a statue of the virgin Mary "right there and what do you know? No portal, that sword really is useless."

Arthur began to walk over to the sword but halted when Sirius said "Wait." Arthur and Dragoness looked at Sirius who was studying the stone pillar the sword had scarred, more specifically the carvings on the pillar "I've seen this language and art before."

"Where?" Dragoness queried, looking at them and thinking they looked out of place.

"The Cauldron." Sirius remembered "In Doom's throne room, these words and glyphs were all around."

"Latvarian." Dragoness realised "We need to tell the others."

Arthur was about to go fetch Excalibur when something caught his eye; on the gashed pillar one of the carvings looked newer than the others, it was of a bow and arrow. He reached out and touched it with his paw and heard a click. Suddenly part of the pillar opened like a door revealing a very modern looking touch screen panel which lit up as soon as it was exposed. "Sneaky." he commented.

"This looks an awful lot like the technology we found at that subway station in Jersey city." Dragoness said with a smile, feeling like this was a break in the case "I bet this activates a rift."

"Um guys." Sirius said, her brown eyes fixed to where the sword was.

"Hmm?" Arthur sounded.

"What are those?" Sirius asked with a shaky voice, pointing at four figures stood around the sword staring at the trio. They weren't human, they weren't mammals either, their forms seemed to be hunched over and made of purple smoke with bright eyes staring at them.

Dragoness took a hold of her rifle and aimed it at the creatures before demanding "Identify yourselves!"

They didn't answer, they lunged forward with claws ready to rip the allies apart, Arthur's body acted on its own as he sprung forward into danger while growling "Stupid sword!"

(AN/DUN DUN DUN! What are the creatures? Maiden has laid down the gauntlet! Will Blade kill Frost? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review. Next time on TBM; Arthur, Sirius and Dragoness fight an unknown force, Zoe clues in Rocket and Esso about her plan and Maiden's mission hits a snag. Please review and c ya soon...)


	40. Weapons

(AN/ Hey folks sorry for the lateness of this chapter, the exam season had been hell on everyone in the dev team, thank you for your patience and messages of support and all the reviews for last chapter. Also big thanks to Smoketrail Prime for writing part of this chapter, so without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 39 - Weapons**

"What are those?" Sirius asked with a shaky voice, pointing at three figures stood around the sword staring at the trio. They weren't human, they weren't mammals either, their forms seemed to be hunched over and made of purple smoke with bright eyes staring at them.

Dragoness took a hold of her rifle and aimed it at the creatures before demanding "Identify yourselves!"

They didn't answer, they lunged forward with claws ready to rip the allies apart, Arthur's body acted on it's own as he sprung forward into danger while growling "Stupid sword!"

"Knight!" Dragoness yelled, she saw one of the figures swipe at Arthur, she fired an shot from the energy rifle at the creature before it could hit him, it stumbled and let out a shriek but that still left the other two heading for herself and Sirius.

Sirius powered up, her entire form becoming a brighter purple than the attackers, she expected the attacker to pass right through her like all other mass but got a shock when she was tackled to the ground "They can hit me!?" Sirius gasped before retaliating with a beam of electricity from her right paw, sending the creature flying through the hole in the roof.

"Sirius, any ideas what the hell these things are!?" Dragoness seethed, using her wings to launch herself into the air only to be pulled back down by her reptilian like tail and be slammed into the stone floor, she narrowly missed a claw to the face by rolling out of the way of the smoke creature.

"Not a clue but if they can shift their molecular density to attack even me, we're in trouble." Sirius explained, she'd be excited to study these enemies if they weren't trying to kill her.

"They're Wraiths!" Arthur shouted over the skirmish, the wolf was trying to pull the great sword from out from the stone floor but it wasn't budging.

"How do you-" Sirius began to ask, flying out of the way of the Wraith who came swooping back through the hole in the roof.

"My Grandfather told me stories about them, they used to show up in my home village." Arthur answered with a strained voice, still unable to shift the sword "All the kids used to think it was a ghost story."

"Any idea how to beat these things?!" Dragoness barked, firing another shot from her energy rifle only for it to miss and hit the church altar, tearing a huge chunk out of it.

"Why'd do you think I'm trying to pull this stupid thing out of the floor!?" Arthur shouted back, then he noticed one of the Wraiths coming him for him again, Sirius and Dragoness were busy fighting off their own enemies. "Bollocks." He uttered as the Wraith slithered towards him with it's claws outstretched and making a high pitched whine "Come on, come on, come on!" Arthur willed the sword, but it wasn't shifting.

Without a second thought he gave up on trying to pull the sword out of the floor and turned to face the Wraith as it collided into him tearing both sides of his jacket as he was pushed onto the ground making the old leather jacket tear up even more. Before the Wraith could do anything else Arthur manged to roll back onto his feet and stared at the entity with both rage and terror as it whined at him again. Arthur then ripped off his ruined jacket and tossed it aside "Come on!" he shouted causing the Wraith to charge at him, the wolf reacted by stepping back and tapping into his power causing a nearby statue of Saint Xavier to be torn from his pedestal and throw it at the charging wraith which in the end didn't help because his aim was way off, as he was tackled again and dragged into air he growled "Ah crap!"

During this in mid-flight with another wraith Sirius was having issuers with her Wraith since it was trying to bite at her with it's crooked teeth, all she could really do at this point was hold it back enough with the odd arc of lighting but all it was really doing was doing was slowing it down, it had adapted to her attacks.

Dragoness then quickly fired a couple of blasts from her energy rifle at her Wraith as it came swooping at her, she quickly used her wings to gain some air and dodge the creature before it could grab her causing it to smash into a wall giving her enough time to look up to Arthur and toss her rifle to the struggling canine. "Knight, catch!" She hollered at him, tossing her rifle in the air to his direction before taking out a high powered kree pistol from her holster and began firing it at the Wraith she had just dodged.

Arthur although was being pressed against a pane of a stained glass window high above where his sword rested managed to grab the rifle thrown to him, in desperation he used his power to push the Wraith off him and he fell to the ground he managed to use one of his paws to use his powers to force push the wraith back enough from him to fire off two shots from the rifle as he hurtled back to the ground hitting the stone with a painful thud and pain coursing through his back.

"Knight! Come on, get up we need to destroy these things!" Dragoness yelled at him, using her long tail to swat at the Wraith trying to grab her from below.

"We can't..." Arthur coughed, winded from the fall and struggling to get back to his feet.

"But you said the sword-" Sirius began to respond but was cut off when the other wolf barked back.

"It's useless Clara!" Arthur bellowed "It was useless when it was pendent around my neck for all these years, it was useless when I tried to save the mammals being hunted or killed by Doom and it's useless now even after saving Jason and Alice!" He faced the sword and let out "You hear me, you're useless!" He clenched his fist and punched the dull face of the sword's blade part of the sword with frustration creating a loud metal chime that shouldn't have happened. Once the chime rang out a blaze of blue fire engulfed both Excalibur and Arthur, his fur stood on end as a stream of memories and voices cascaded through his mind, even though it hurt he felt drawn to something pure within the sword and within himself. Snapping his eyes open, they started to glow with same blue flame that surrounded him, experiencing a rush of forgotten knowledge and memories from his childhood he blocked out so long ago. He was so absorbed by what the sword was showing him he did not notice Sirius screaming to him when all three of the Wraiths honed in on him at him, Arthur only noticed them when their ear-piercing shrieks reached his ears. He paws gripped around the handle of the great sword he put all his strength and focus into removing the sword from the floor _No more death, I won't let anyone else die, whatever it takes!_ He told himself mentally.

Then he heard it, the crumble of stone, the scraping of metal as he felt the sword move as the floor around him shuddered and just before the closest Wraith got within striking distance he yanked Excalibur free. Reacting just in time to avoid the claws ready to cleave his head from his shoulders, he ducked down causing all three Wraiths to crash into the statue of the Virgin Mary behind him before swiping Excalibur upwards making all the creatures disappear with a scream and flash of light, the magic blast from the sword was so powerful that it reduce the statue to bits and let a scorching, smouldering scar on the wall.

The exhausted and panting Arthur stepped back slowly, still in shock before dropping to his knees with his sword still gripped tightly in his paws. The blue fire surrounding him dissipated and all he was left with was the tears in his eyes, the unearthed memories still fresh and painful in his mind. He jumped slightly when he felt a paw on his shoulder, Arthur looked up to see a concerned yet tired Sirius looking down at him. "I am so sorry." He wept in a broken voice "I'm so-" without time to react Sirius crouched down and gently hugged him.

"Hey it's ok limey, we're all ok" Sirius soothed as the smaller wolf continued to cry.

"Your sword found the rift Arthur, you saved us valuable time." Drangoness breathed, picking up her rifle that Arthur had dropped and walking over to the rift console in the pillar "Now we just have to figure out how we're going to use it."

"What's to figure? Just turn it on." Sirius replied, helping the upset Arthur back to his feet while Dragoness typed away at the console.

"Shit!...Give me a break!" Dragoness seethed at the console.

"What's wrong?" Arthur sniffed, drying his eyes.

"Latvarian-god damn-technology, that's what! I've seen this type of security system before." Dragoness raged, just when she thought she had a break in the case another roadblock presented itself.

"Can't you get Viv to hack it?" Sirius asked, walking over.

"There's no way to hack this," Dragoness gave an irked sigh "it's an enhanced DNA lock, Doom must've got paranoid after what happened in Jersey and beefed up security."

"DNA lock?" Arthur asked in a shaky way, using his sword to balance on as Dragoness continued to type away at the console.

"It's a security measure that needs both a fresh sample of DNA and the handprint of someone to unlock it and according to this we need two people to unlock this." Dragoness explained, stepping away from the console and getting out her phone.

Sirius let out a drawn out groan before asking "Let me guess, Ronin and Andi?"

"Yeah. But they're not going to get to use this place, I'm going to have SHIELD lock this place down, give me an hour and this place will be like Fort Knox." Dragoness replied, selecting SHIELD HQ's number from her contacts.

000

"I'm not sorry." Frost panted, the vampire was on his knees wearing a heavily beaten face and cradling his right arm, which was twisted and broken.

The Frost Rooms had fallen. The vampire and demon haven had been defeated in just under an hour, the majority of the demons had escaped back to their realms but the vampires were all slain. Out of the two hundred and sixteen vampires that were in the vicinity of the Jolly Butcher slaughterhouse only Frost remained. He had been brought up to the yard of the slaughterhouse to look at the freed humans from the kitchen be tended to and treated by SHIELD medics whom Coulson had sent once the vampires had been defeated. "I wasn't expecting an apology anyway," Blade replied gruffly, standing beside Frost with his sword drawn "I just wanted you to see that you lost."

Frost let out a pained chuckle "Of course I know I lost."

"No, your kind lost, vampires lost." Blade corrected "We killed every blood sucker in that hotel and saved these humans, I'd say vamps in this city were dealt a big blow tonight."

"All these years and you're still so naive Eric." Frost breathed, his broken nose making it so he had to inhale through his mouth "You've killed thousands of us and yet we return again and again, we're inevitable like a wildfire in a forest or a plague among the human cattle."

Blade was irritated by this response luckily another hero had a comeback "You're right, you are a plague." Maiden spoke sternly, walking over from the ambulances, the doctor had been doing what she could to help the freed humans "But any plague can be beaten."

"You're as foolish as the day walker, vixen. No disease can truly die." Frost argued, he knew he was going to die but he wanted one last victory, even if it was verbal.

"Polio, smallpox, rinderpest and very soon AIDs. All viruses that people said could never be eradicated or cured are now just a bitter memory. It took time and a lot of work to purge them but they're gone now, just like vampires will be gone." Maiden replied, pressing her star broach and making her bleeding edge mask retreat into it's vessel so she could make sure that Frost could see her amber eyes "I read your file, you were once a human, a scientist looking for immortality but you wound up getting infected by the very virus you were studying. Now there's nothing left of that man, vampirism has consumed you and all you do is spread the virus. But lucky for humanity they already have a cure."

Blade liked the words that had come from the archer and before they were sullied by a reply from Frost he quickly raised his sword and beheaded the vampire lord, turning him to ash "Silver, motherfucker." he simmered, sheathing his sword.

"I only knew the guy for less than hour and I was looking forward to seeing him as a pile of dust." Maiden commented, looking at the fresh ash pile.

"Sorry that your marks got away." Blade said plainly, it was more of an acknowledgement than sincerity.

"Don't worry, I'll get another chance." Maiden gave a smile that Blade thought was odd, but he didn't question it.

The vampire hunter then looked across the yard, Ms Marvel was sat on the hood of one of the now discarded BMWs being comforted by Spiderman and Snowguard, he let out a small grunt before walking over. "Ms. Marvel." he greeted.

The inhuman looked up, her brown eyes bloodshot and puffy from crying, her right hand was holding Spidey's hand and her left holding Snowguard's, she hated being seen like this but there was no escaping the sorrow she was feeling at this time. She took strength from the comfort of her friends and responded simply with "Blade."

"I need to apologise to you." Blade admitted "I'm sorry for putting you through this, I know my world is ugly but we saved lives tonight."

"...I know, but this doesn't feel like a victory." Ms Marvel said, trying to regain some composure.

"It's not supposed to feel like that." Blade agreed "Most of these vampires were just normal people, but once they got a taste of blood they died, at least now they're at peace. And you and your friends stopped those poor people being dinner for them bastards." the swordsman motioned to the dozens of SHIELD medics tending to the freed prisoners.

"I still feel crap about it, though." Ms Marvel sighed, willing herself to not shed anymore tears.

"Listen you did more for this cause in one hour than The Avengers ever did, you stopped a massive human trafficking operation and rid Queens of the vampire virus, I know it hurts now but one day you'll look back on this and realise you did the right thing." Blade tried to lift the girl's spirits.

"I know you're trying to cheer me up, but your words aren't working. But the fact that big bad day walker is trying to make me feel better makes me feel a little bit better. Thank you Blade." Ms Marvel said, offering her hand for a shake which the swordsman gladly reciprocated.

On the other side of the yard behind one of the SHIELD ambulances Scarlet had just finished recounting the tale of her fight with the vampiric chef in the mirror room complete with seeing alternate versions of herself in the mirror "...And as soon as I staked the creep the reflections disappeared just like that." Scarlet explained with a snap of her fingers.

"And you said the one that helped you was a boy dressed in your uniform?" Bullet asked, amazed by her wife's story.

"Jay-Tee, I know that was his name but we didn't look alike, I mean he was clearly a hybrid but he looked a lot different." Scarlet said, unable to forget the face of her doppelganger and saviour.

Brawn was having a mild freak out from excitement, upon hearing this explanation "You weren't just able to look into one dimension but multiple and they were able to respond without a cosmic event, this breaks every rule of science possible."

"When we get back to Zootopia I am going to study the hell out of that power." Olivia grinned, the chest plate of her mech was open showing the mouse sat in the cockpit.

"Not before I get to investigate it, you get to study her power forever, I only get until she leaves." Iron Heart commented, curious about the hybrid's mysterious power, she looked over to Wasp and smiled "What do you say, Nadia? Us nerdy Champs put our brains together and try and figure out Robyn's mirror abilities?"

Wasp had been standing with the group but had been clearly lost in thought, the brunette looked at her friends and gave a dazed "Huh?"

"Robyn's power? We need to research it." Iron Heart prompted.

"Oh, sure, whatever." Wasp replied lazily, her mind somewhere else.

Viv took note of the odd behaviour and enquired "Is everything ok?"

"Y-yeah." Wasp lied, also lazily, before putting her helmet back on "Listen I'm going to bounce, I'm feeling pretty tired, I'll speak to you guys tomorrow." then before anyone could say bye she shrunk down to insect size and flew into the night sky.

"Well that was weird." Bullet pointed out the obvious once Wasp was out of sight.

"Don't take it personally," Brawn assured "Nadia's like that sometimes, she can be happy and excited one moment and deathly quiet the next. It's normal for her."

"If you say so." Scarlet shrugged, hoping that Brawn was right about the pint sized heroine.

000

Doctor Doom was sat on his throne within the Cauldron, the master of science and magic was looking at the holographic projections of Ronin and Andi, both women on one knee with their heads bowed. "It would seem that Doom underestimated Ceartais and The Champions." The dictator mulled "In the spac of an hour they found the Latvarian church rift and attacked your hiding place, they're getting smarter, securing the church while you were to distracted to guard it."

" **Had we known the church was their primary target we would've rushed there, we have failed you again Lord Doom."** Ronin grovelled. Each of the villains thought SHIELD taking the church had been part of the plan all along and that the Frost Rooms assault was just a diversion, little did they know it was just dumb luck.

"Fret not, Ronin. You did the right thing fleeing, had you been caught Doom's plan would be at severe risk." Doom replied.

" **But Lord Doom with the church under SHIELD protection me and Ronin have lost our gateway to Zootopia, how will we check on Beast?"** Andi enquired, she was worried she knew Doom would have a plan.

"Doom will check on Dr. McCoy, there is still a rift to Zootopia on this ship and if needs be the ship's computer can activate Nightcrawler's enhanced mutation and teleport the entire Cauldron to Zootopia." Doom assured "Hopefully it won't come to that, Doom had already dispatched agents to install another rift gate in a secure location, in three days you'll be able access other dimensions again."

" **What are our orders, m'lord?"** Ronin asked formally.

"Until a new rift gate is installed you need to stay out of sight and avoid conflict at any cost, if you're captured the heroes will use you to open the rift in the church." Doom instructed.

" **Yes, Lord Doom."** Andi lied, she had no intention of obeying this order, there was no way on earth she was missing her duel with Maiden.

Doom then pressed a button on his throne and the holograms disappeared, he let out a long sigh "To think Doom must perform such menial tasks like feeding Beast, Bloom's skin shall adorn this floor before this is all over." He then stood up and walked behind the throne and going over to one of the walls, he typed in a command of the left forearm of his hi tech armour causing one of the wall panels to raise up into the ceiling revealing purple cloud rift, he didn't hesitate and stepped straight through, the wall panel slid back down and he was gone. Leaving an onlooker grinning.

Zoe Nightfall had snuck into the throne room and had been clinging upside down to ceiling for over an hour, using her technomancer abilities to stop any scanners in the room detecting her. She had heard everything how Team Ceartais had chased out Ronin and Andi of the Frost Rooms and how Clara and Arthur had captured the rift at the church, although it was unnerving to see holograms of the evil human versions of her friends. But the most important thing Zoe had eavesdropped on was the words about The Cauldron being able to transport itself to Zootopia. The flying fox had formed a plan almost instantly, she still had a grin on her face as she reached for the makeshift radio she had made.

A few decks below in Esso and Rocket's cell the two bunkmates were sat at the small table in their cell playing cards, the stakes? Pudding cups of course. "And that's another cup for me." Esso sniggered, laying down her winning hand.

"How the hell do you keep winning!?" Rocket growled, watching on in frustration as Esso dragged another pudding cup to her pile.

"Simple, you're easy to read, it's like you're telegraphing your hand to me with just your expressions." Esso replied smugly.

"Damn whenever I play Quill or Drax I always rob them blind, this feels new and I don't like it." Rocket pouted.

"Aww poor little Rocket, why don't you go bang Vanessa again to cheer yourself up?" Esso teased.

"That was a one time thing." Rocket grunted, suddenly the small radio rocket had hidden in his pocket buzzed into life, he quickly scrambled it out, pressed the call button and spoke "Hello?"

" **Hey."** Zoe replied.

"I'm here to Zoe, what's up?" Esso asked, getting up and closing the door to the cell so they wouldn't be disturbed.

" **I'll keep this quick because I don't know when Doom is coming back, anyway I just heard him speaking to his assassins and he mentioned that The Cauldron has the ability to move through dimensions, this ship can take us home."** Zoe explained.

"Well duh, how'd you think it got in the void in the first place?" Rocket snorted.

" **We thought Doom used Kurt himself to physically teleport the ship but if there's controls we can use we can get everyone back to Zootopia and you can bring Tazerface back to your dimension."** Zoe explained.

"That's great and all Zoe but what about Doom and all his robots." Esso brought up her concerns.

"And these freaking bracelets." Rocket added, not wanting to violently vomit all over again.

" **Doom has his own rift that he can get Zootopia with, he's holding someone codenamed Beast there and needs to check his work on the power extraction project so we'll have a brief window to take the ship. We need to take the bridge, take out Tazerface and deactivate the hornet bracelets through the ship's main computer."** Zoe mapped out.

"And what about the Doombots?" Rocket asked, already liking the sound of this plan.

" **Without the bracelets every prisoner will be free to use their powers, we need to riot and take over the ship before Doom gets back, then we force Tazerface to get us to Zootopia."** Zoe proposed.

"Great another riot, let's hope I don't get the crap beaten out of me again." Esso worried aloud "When are we doing this?"

" **We have a three day window, as soon as Doom goes through the rift again I'll radio you two and get you to go up the trash chute again and take the bridge. Can you handle that?"** Zoe asked, her voice serious.

"You bet your winged ass we can." Rocket smiled smugly, looking forward to knocking seven bells out of Tazerface, justice for Lylla was so close now.

000

The day after the attack on the Frost Rooms Team Ceartais slept in late on the SHIELD hele-frigate and the majority of The Champions were not on board with Ms Marvel being the most notable absence, the Champions' leader was shaken from the mission and everyone understood when she texted to say she was going to spend time with her family and friends to chill. Iron Heart and Brawn were out on an impromptu date, both scientists feeling the urge to spend some time together that didn't involve hero work. Clara and Viv were running through data collected through the rift controls and were in the lab trying to figure out a way to bypass the DNA locked rift controls in the Brooklyn church but neither of them could figure it out. Luna had left the napping Alice in their quarters and made her way to Dragoness' office near the control deck of the Kestrel.

When Luna entered the office Dragoness immediately put her right index finger to her lips instructing the vixen to remain silent, the winged inhuman shut and locked the door and flicked a switch on the wall, it did nothing physically but a low humming sound could be heard. "The walls of this office have small vibrating magnets in the panels, it messes up surveillance equipment." Dragoness explained.

"And the vibrations will disrupt Hannah's super hearing, clever." Luna complimented, immediately noticing a small SHIELD weapons case on the desk "Is that what I think it is?"

"It arrived this morning, took some work to get that thing." Dragoness sighed "Are you sure you need it?"

"Absoloutley, that'll floor Andi in seconds." Luna said firmly "And it look's like I have another reason to kill her now, her DNA."

"Yeah but we need both Ronin and Andi's handprints and DNA to unlock the rift controls, how do we get Ronin's?" Dragoness asked, knowing how crafty both assassins could be.

"Ronin won't stray far from Andi and when I kill her I'm betting Ronin will come after me like a woman possessed, we'll capture her and use her DNA to open a rift." Luna sounded sure of herself "I just hope the rift leads to somewhere we need to go, like The Cauldron or Zootopia."

"You really want to get Alice home, don't you?" Dragoness asked, her eyes glancing over at a framed photo on her desk, it was of her caught mid laugh stood next to tall white man with thick black hair and pair of caring eyes framed by glasses.

Luna noticed Dragoness looking at the photo of her departed husband and said with sympathy "I'll do anything to keep her safe, just like you would've done."

"...Luna are you sure about this? I can do this for you, I have nothing to lose, you are about to be a mother, is this really worth the risk?" Dragoness asked, her voice full of unease.

"No. It has to be me, she'll only fight me. Just make sure that building has all my toys ready for when that bitch comes knocking." Luna replied, not backing down "Andi is going to die."

"No she's not." A familiar voice interjected.

Before Dragoness or Luna could react Wasp jumped off the back of Luna's sweater and grew back to her normal size, took off her helmet and stared at the two conspirators with a mix of worry and anger. "Shit." Dragoness whispered.

"I didn't want to believe it when I heard you at The Frost Rooms last night, I raced to help you but..." Wasp tried to form an sentence but it was too hard, she was confused by this "Why Luna? Why are you doing this?"

"Because no one else can." Luna answered, her demeanour wasn't nervous, she seemed to be barely reacting to her secret being exposed.

"But Team Ceartais is like The Champions, you don't kill." Wasp protested.

Luna could see where this conversation was heading, a likely shouting match before Wasp shrunk down escaped the room and told everyone about her plan so she took a different route "You see that box on the desk? Open it."

"Huh?" Wasp reacted, confused by the out of the blue request.

"Open the box, it has the weapon inside that I'm going to kill Andi with." Luna urged, nodding at the box.

"Luna, you sure?" Dragoness squeaked.

"I'm sure, go on Nadia. Open it." Luna prompted, her eyes locked on the teen.

Wasp had already primed her stun blasters in case either of the plotters tried to rush her and knock her out, she took a few cautious steps towards the desk and unclipped the latches of the metal box and slowly opened it. Her expression of suspicion faded away and her face became one of utter confusion "Wait, what?" she mumbled.

Luna took a step forward, looked at the weapon and said grimly "This is how I'll kill Andi and you Wasp are going to help me."

(AN/ What's in the box!? What did you folks think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review. Next chapter of TBM should drop Wednesday so no spoilers til then, please review and c ya soon...)


	41. Redacted

(AN/Hey folks, I'm back as promised with a mid week chapter, thank you for all the messages of support especially in light of renewed trolling, so without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 40- *Redacted, chapter name at end of the chapter***

Kodi had already into settled into the daily routine aboard The Kestrel. His wake up call would be the sound of Quin Jets taking off from the landing strip at exactly 7am, breakfast would be served in the mess hall at 7.30, take care of superhero stuff until lunch at midday, more superhero stuff then dinner at 5pm but there was thing the wolf could not get used to since coming on board the SHIELD hele-frigate; tiredness. The spell caster was used to waking up early back in Zootopia, he'd usually hit the gym at dawn before opening up the garage but for the last few mornings he was struggling to fully wake up before midday. The reason? Professor Clara Bloom. The physicist was very active when it came to the bedroom and the late night romps were taking their toll on Kodi, he loved the sex but the tiredness was hell. Kodi was half asleep as he sat at the mess hall table eating his oatmeal when an equally exhausted Luna came over and sat down next to him with a plate of toast with blueberry jam and huge mug of coffee "Morning," she yawned then looked at Kodi and added "yikes and I thought I was tired."

"Let's just say Clara's not big on sleeping in the bedroom." Kodi replied "We howl too much so I had cast a spell to block the sounds coming from our room."

"Damn that's the same reason I'm beat, Alice has always been horny, I mean she's a bunny but ever since she's become pregnant she's gone into overdrive." Luna explained, taking a gulp of the black coffee.

Kodi raised his own mug and mock toasted "To the girls in our lives that keep us up all night."

"Cheers." Luna gave a tired laugh, clinking her mug against Kodi's.

On a nearby table Arthur was finishing off his breakfast, happily listening to Jason tell him about all the anime he watched and video games he played with Alice over the last couple of days. The wolf was happy that Jason had started to relax a bit more, he didn't trust humans yet but he could talk to any of The Champions or SHIELD crew members without cowering anymore and he appreciated Alice looking after the caracal whenever he had to deal with Excalibur. He was so engrossed in Jason explaining about the human version of Naruto that he didn't notice Robyn approach the table. "Can I sit here?" she asked, the ginger hybrid was dressed in a plain purple t shirt and a pair of shorts and had a SHIELD sports bag hung on her shoulder.

"Um, go ahead." Arthur reacted, mildly surprised that Robyn wanted to talk but he quickly added "But if you're here to chew me out can you at least wait until Jason's out of the room."

Robyn looked like she was about snap some bitter words back at his but she calmed herself and said "I need to apologise to you...Kodi pointed out that I was a major jerk to you the other night when we were sparring on the flight deck. So, sorry."

Arthur wasn't expecting an apology, the confrontational hybrid was tough in both her demeanour and words, she usually wasn't the type to back down so to hear this caught him unawares "I...uh, apology accepted." Arthur fumbled.

"Right...good." Robyn said, wrestling with being nice to a mammal she had disliked for a while "And I guess I need to thank you as well, if it wasn't for you and your sword we'd never have found that other rift."

Arthur leaned back in his chair and answered honestly "It was sheer luck, that's all it was. I have no idea how Excalibur works or how my powers are tied to it."

"But you saved Clara and the dragon lady." Jason tried to lift his friend's spirits.

"Her name is Dragoness and it was more like they were saving me, I just got thrown around a lot by those Wraiths." Arthur tried to play down the encounter.

"But you used Excalibur to deal the killing blow, I've seen the photos from the church, it's pretty bad ass." Robyn chimed in, she couldn't deny that she was impressed by the scorch marks left on the masonry and the shattered statues.

"...Yeah but it was terrifying." Arthur replied glumly.

"So? You were fighting monsters, who wouldn't get scared?" Robyn asked back.

"No that's not what I mean, I mean when I touched the sword at the church, I saw things. Like hours of memories condensed into a few seconds, it felt like a hot poker burning through my skull." Arthur corrected.

"What did you see that scared you?" Robyn queried, wondering what was scarier that Wraiths that Clara had described to her the day before.

"It wasn't all bad, I remember playing in the garden with my mum when I was little, having Sunday lunch with the family or my Grandfather reading me myth after myth, most of them involving Seren." Arthur answered wearing a mournful smile.

"Was the fire the scary thing? I've heard you talk about a fire before." Jason asked innocently.

Arthur hadn't anticipated feeling a sting from the mention of the fire, he shook it off and replied "Yeah, I saw that memory too."

"How did it happen?" Robyn asked, her trademark bolshiness undetectable.

"To this day I don't know, I know I could look up the report but I don't want to. I lost everyone and everything in that fire and I've blocked out so much of it for so long but I can't escape feeling that I'm responsible for it." Arthur opened up.

"You were a kid, younger than Jason, none of it could've been your fault." Robyn tried to dismiss the notion.

"I tell myself that all the time and yet I still feel that way." Arthur said.

"Your family wouldn't want you blaming yourself." Jason pointed out.

"The kid's got a point, is something happened to me I wouldn't want my son blaming himself for something that was out of his control." Robyn supported Jason's words before remembering "Anyway, I kinda' got you a peace offering." placing the SHIELD sport's bag on the table.

Arthur stared at the bag for a few seconds but when he didn't act Robyn prompted "Well don't just look at it, open it up dipshit."

Arthur unzipped the bag and pulled out the biggest item inside, it was a jacket, it was dark grey and looked like leather but it didn't feel like it to the touch, upon closer inspection the fabric was designed to look like armour plating. Around the zipper and parts of the side the fabric was golden, on both forearms with attached gauntlets with a comm link and a small screen to display information and to top of it off the shield crest of the Knight family was adorned on the each shoulder like pauldrons. "Holy...this is amazing." Arthur mumbled.

"I got Riri to scan your body and make this for you, that stuff isn't leather it's bullet and shock proof synthetic fabric, didn't know how you felt about the symbol so that shoulder pad can be removed easily. Oh and not forgetting." Robyn listed, reaching into the sport's bag and pulling out what looked to be a brown leather chest holster with a metal disc on the back "Seeing as Excalibur doesn't have a scabbard you can use this to strap it to your back, put one magnet on the sword and it will react to the one on the holster."

"Robyn, thank you, but you didn't have to do this." Arthur smiled.

"Don't get mushy on me, Knight. This is as much for me as it for you. The way I see it I want everyone on my side to be geared up with the best stuff because you and I both know Doctor Doom won't go down without a fight." Robyn smiled confidently.

Arthur didn't have a reply, he just looked at the Knight family crest knowing what was expected of him and unsure if he could deliver.

000

Clara's tail was wagging happily as she munched on her bagel, the wolf feeling bright and happy as she discussed the Wraiths with her fellow 'Genius' heroes. Yesterday was seen as a day off for the majority of the heroes, they didn't leave The Frost Rooms until 4am and by the time they were briefed on what happened in the Latvarian church in Brooklyn it was dawn. So this morning all the nerds assembled to figure out what the Wraiths were and if there was any chance of bypassing the DNA lock.

"Is this what they looked like?" Riri asked, the engineer had started to research old English legends surrounding Wraiths, specifically around the English/Welsh border area around Seren. She brought up a dozen or so illustrations from throughout the centuries of similar smoke-like creatures on the large screen.

"Yeah that's them, but less human looking, more like a shadowy mass." Clara confirmed, scoffing on her bagel.

"Spooky, I hate magic stuff, at least if it's source it natural you can explain it with science." Brawn commented, leaning against a fridge for chemicals.

"There is no reason to believe that these Wraiths are magical in origin." Viv spoke, she was sat with a helmet-less Wasp who was going over the schematics of DNA locks on the church's rift controls.

"Big demon looking spectres appear in a church next to a magical sword and you think they're not mystical?" Clara asked with her mouth full.

"These creatures appeared next to Excalibur, but the sword has programming and coding within it and emits a similar energy signature to that of the rifts, what if these creatures were already there because of the faint rift signature already and when the sword crashed through the roof they were drawn to a higher concentration of energy." Viv hypothesised.

"Why though?" Riri asked.

"To eat, of course." Olivia spoke up, holding up her first rodent sized candy bar of the day, she was on top of the work table Viv and Wasp were sat at "My bet is those wee blightees feed off rift energy somehow, like trans dimensional scavengers."

"But if that's the case why haven't they shown up at any other rifts like the two in Jersey?" Brawn wondered aloud, he liked Olivia's theory, it was much appealable than demons.

"Too many people, like most scavengers they won't go after their food if bigger badder things are surrounding it. They probably went after Excalibur because it seemed like a Vegas buffet and thought they could take Knight, Dragoness and bagel girl over there." Olivia figured.

"It does seem pretty sound, but does that mean these things could show up again?" Riri asked cautiously.

"Never say never." Clara shrugged, using a napkin to wipe off the excess cream cheese from her muzzle.

"But goth phase Casper isn't our main issue, getting the rift open is, any luck with the scans of the device Nadia?" Brawn asked Wasp who's eyes were fixed on the tablet.

Wasp shook her head and replied "All out of luck, I thought if there were any switches or circuits I could activate while I'm shrunk down but it's useless. I can't activate the handprint switch without a sample of blood from each assassin."

"Anyway we could use any of the DNA that SHIELD and other crime agencies have gathered over the years?" Olivia asked.

"DNA locks require a sample that's less than thirty seconds old, the instant the sample starts to degrade it becomes useless." Iron Heart mused.

"We have no choice, we need to capture Andi and Ronin to get you and the other mammals back to Zootopia." Wasp sighed, looking at Olivia.

"Yeah well we blew that chance at the Frost Rooms." Olivia groused.

Wasp looked back at the plans, there was no other way, she'd have to go along Luna's plot but she couldn't believe the vixen had convinced her it was the right thing to do.

000

Alice had just come out of the en-suite bathroom to her and Luna's cabin when she saw her wife zipping up her black jacket "You're heading out?" Alice asked, still dripping wet and covering herself with a towel "Is there a mission?"

"Nah, I'm just going to head to with Dragoness to that Latvarian church in Brooklyn, she thinks if I go there I might 'Think' like Andi and find some clue to where they're hiding now." Luna answered, not looking her wife in the eye as she lied "Probably a dead end but she's been on at me all day to check it out, I'm not even suiting up for it."

"Well if it's going to be a dead end I can think of a much better way to spend your time." Alice tempted, opening her towel to reveal her naked self.

Luna looked over and laughed "You're going to be the death of me, you barely let me sleep last night."

"Just letting you get some sleep deprivation training for when the kits are born, then there will be no time for sex just late night feeds, changing diapers and all the other joys of parenthood." Alice crooned, strolling over and tossing away her towel trying to ensnare the vixen into lust.

"Alice, I love you but if I don't do this, that pain in the ass with wings will be bitching at me for days to come." Luna replied, knowing at any other time she would crawl into bed with the rabbit she loved.

"Tch, fine." Alice tutted, grabbing a bath robe and slipping it on "Until later then, _Mon Amour."_

Luna leaned down, kissed the bunny softly and said "I love you." before walking out of their cabin. The archer was grateful she didn't run into any or her teammates or The Champions on the way to the flight deck, she walked outside onto the windy platform and noticed Quin-Jet number T2 had its back door open, she made a b line for it and as soon as she was inside the hatch door began to close.

"Did she buy it?" Dragoness asked from the pilot's seat, powering up the aircraft.

"Yes." Luna replied curtly, she felt like the worst mammal in the world for lying to her beloved, but this needed to be done "Any word from Wasp?"

"She's put all the equipment ready inside the room, she's staying shrunk and looking out for any traps that Andi or Ronin might set." Dragoness answered, pulling up and letting the jet vertically take off.

Luna opened a storage cupboard in the back of the jet to find her bow, quiver, batons and uniform waiting, she began to strip out of her civilian clothes and fretted "But she's staying outside the room, right? I don't want her interfering."

"She won't be inside, she's outside on a power line, she's ready to follow your orders...still can't believe you got her to go along with this plan." Dragoness responded, flying down towards New York.

"Because she knows it's the only way to beat Andi." Luna answered, starting to change into her Maiden uniform "And by the end of the night we'll have vengeance for your husband, for Steve and all the other lives that bitch has taken."

"That or she'll take yours. Luna this is the last chance to back out, one wrong step in this plan and you're dead." Dragoness cautioned, feeling conflicted.

"If I live or die, we're getting that DNA for the rift console's lock. Just be ready in case this thing goes south." Luna advised, trying not to think about what would happen if her plan failed.

000

"This is too simple." Ronin bristled, looking through her goggles on their thermal settings, seeing a lone heat signature of vixen through the building "There's no way she's alone."

Both Ronin and Andi were perched atop a crane overlooking the G.R.O.G brewery, this Staten Island brewery had been shut down three weeks before by the city's health inspectors after they found some of the tanks contaminated. The place was still under investigation and with an extremely lazy security guard asleep in the guard station it made a perfect place for a fight to go undisturbed.

"That's why I've got you watching my back, lover." Andi replied giddily.

Alice pulled up her goggles and looked at the sniper rifle laying on the metal grating beside her "I could just blow her head off, right here, right now." Ronin offered.

"Ah, ah, ah, we agreed you only do that if she's tricked us." Andi reminded, checking the arrows in her quiver.

"Andi this is madness, if Doctor Doom finds out about this he'll tear us limb from limb, let's just shoot the fox and leave." Ronin implored, grabbing onto Andi's arm.

Andi's face went from an excited expression to devious in a heartbeat, she put her hand on Ronin's and slowly removed it while saying "You fucking up the drone attack was madness, lover. You abandoned the objective and focused on that pregnant rabbit and giving those animals, The Champions and Blade the chance to track us to The Frost Rooms. Your impulse nearly ruined everything, ruined the chances of a normal life for us in Latvaria and becoming parents. Now I have a fool-proof plan to kill that skanky vixen and you want to talk to me about madness?"

Ronin was hurt by the words even though it was the truth "...Ok, go kill her." she murmured, submitting to the taller woman's will "But if she tries anything or even gets close to killing you, I'm putting her down."

"Fine, but let me have my fun." Andi replied, firing off a zip line down to the ale storage house "If I suspect anything, I'll radio you." she then used her bow as a hold to zip down the line to the front door of the ale storage house, the assassin wasn't going to sneak in, she intended to walk into this fight with her head held high and unafraid. Andi wasn't surprised to find the door unlocked, she walked down the main corridor to find another set of doors with a multitude of health and safety warning signs plastered on it, Andi opened it half expecting an arrow to be flying at her face but that wasn't the case.

Across the other side of the room, sat on a keg and drinking a bottle of beer was Maiden, with her bow resting on the floor in front of her. The archer's bleeding edge mask hid her eyes but they were fixed on her doppelganger "Nine pm, right on time." she opened with.

"Damn if I were you I would've fired an arrow as soon that door opened." Andi responded, her amber eyes doing a quick scan of the room, not seeing any obvious traps waiting for her.

"I want to do this properly, no tricks, a fair fight to the death." Maiden reiterated, finishing the last of her beer and setting the bottle down "There's a bolt on the door and a padlock, lock us in, I don't want anyone getting or you chickening out and making a break for it."

Andi bolted and padlocked the door as instructed, feeling butterflies in her belly from excitement "And why would I run away from this?"

"Well you and Ronin have set a precedent for running away, I don't want to take any chances." Maiden sassed, picking up her bow up off the floor.

Andi tossed the key on top of a tall pile of beer bottle cases "You know this means you're stuck in here with me." she grinned "But that's what you wanted, no distractions, no heroes, no civilian casualties, just you and me."

"Exactly, there's no innocents for you to use, like you did with me and Cap." Maiden barbed "Coward."

"Ok before we to the trash talk and the whole 'Me putting an entire quiver of arrows in your chest', I want to know something; what's with new look? Pink, purple and grey isn't very Andraste, I mean I chose green because she was a celt goddess."

"The name's Maiden now, I chose the name and colours to honour someone I loved and hated." Maiden said, reading Andi's eyes and seeing no reaction and realising _There was never a Maid for her, only a grandmother._

"Huh, good to know." Andi shrugged, before quickly raising her bow, drawing an arrow and letting it fly.

Maiden saw the move coming a mile off and dove behind a pallet of beer bottles while firing off her own arrow, narrowly missing Andi's head but piercing through her yellow hat and imbedding in the wall behind her.

"Oh you bitch, I love that hat!" Andi barked, firing a trio of corrosive arrows at the boxes of beer on the pallet, the acid burning through Maiden's cover.

Maiden reacted and fired a flashbang arrow at the ceiling, she shut her eyes before the arrow hit flooding the area with light and making Andi stagger and squint, she expected an arrow to fire at her so she darted behind some kegs despite her temporary blindness. When her vision recovered, she peeked behind the kegs to see most of the pallet melted away but no Maiden "Hiding won't help you." she gave a dark chuckle.

"I know." Maiden's voice came from above, Andi had barely enough time to look up and see Maiden perched in the ceiling rafters, the vixen archer shot a normal arrow not at Andi put on the pressure valve for the keg closest to her, the keg erupted instantly the metal shell colliding with Andi's abdomen and sending her to the floor with a wheeze, she was winded and covered in ale.

Andi pushed through the pain and scrambled behind a forklift for cover but she was two slow and got an arrow through her right thigh for her trouble "Argh!" she cried, scurrying behind the vehicle, she took a breath carefully snapped most of the shaft of the arrow off, leaving the piercing arrowhead in its wound. Andi looked at the blood on her hand and gave a sick grin, this was proving a challenge, there was a risk she could lose and she loved it. The smell of her of own blood gave her no adrenaline boost but the excitement of this fight did. The red headed woman then heard a pair of light feet hit the ground and slowly come towards the forklift. Andi smiled and pulled out her three explosive arrows from her quiver before darting out from behind the forklift and letting them loose one after another, Luna managed to get out of the blast zone of two them (Which exploded dozens of kegs and hundreds of beers bottles) but she fumbled and got caught in the force of the last explosion.

Maiden was sent flying into the side of a cargo cage, she lost grip of her bow and it clattered across the floor and she fell into a foetal position beside the cargo cage with a canine yelp. Andi moved as fast as she could and kicked Maiden's bow across the room, well out of reach of the vixen. The mercenary aimed a fresh arrow at the now bow-less archer and sneered "Oh shit, Mommy's girl, you are tough...any last words?"

"Yeah," Maiden began but her arm shot out, throwing a corrosive arrowhead at Andi, the pressure sensitive vial on the arrowhead burst open burning Andi's left hand and disintegrating the curve of the bow. As Andi dropped the bow and clutched her hand to her chest, Maiden rose to her feet and smirked through a pant "Never say 'Any last words', it gives your opponent one last chance to react."

Some of the fingers on Andi's left hand were burnt but her gauntlet had taken the brunt of the damage. She smiled through her pain and laughed "Oh you don't disappoint." unsheathing the daggers from her belt and praying Ronin wouldn't shoot Maiden through the window, this was the toughest fight of her life and she was loving it.

Maiden freed her batons from the loops on her belt and twirling them "Melee weapons it is then." she breathed.

"You ditched your daggers?" Andi half exclaimed, half laughed.

"I prefer the sound of breaking bones to the squishiness of stabbing." Maiden replied, telling a half truth.

Andi smiled with glee as she lunged at Maiden who in turn charged at her dark reflection, the pink sporting heroine swiping her batons four times at the legs of her much taller opponent but the green clad villainess dodging the blows narrowly. Andi saw Maiden over extended and brought her dagger down into the back of her shorter foe, only to have the dagger barely scrape her and slide off the slide "Stab proof fabric, clever." Andi said between breaths, switching to use the pommels of her daggers for attacking.

Maiden saw an opening and struck the already bleeding right thigh of Andi, the merc fell to her knees with a wail and Maiden tried to follow up the attack with another baton blow, this time to the face but Andi was too quick. She shot up both hands, dropping her daggers and grabbing both wrists of Maiden, stopping them in her tracks and began to squeeze hard with her superior strength. Maiden didn't let go off her batons despite the pain, she pulled her head back before forcing it forward, headbutting Andi. The hard metal of her bleeding edge mask causing Andi's nose to break and stream blood, but Andi didn't let go she acted on a twisted impulse and pulled Maiden's left arm to her mouth and snapped down her jaws onto it. It didn't pierce through the suit but the pressure of her teeth was agony, Maiden let out a vulpine squeal of pain and dropped her batons, Andi quickly reacted and threw Maiden like a ragdoll. The vixen crashed into the side of the forklift and was left dazed, she saw Andi coming towards her and started to crawl towards the work station near the far wall. "You should've gone for your bow once you hit me with the acid." Andi taunted, her broken nose filling her taste buds with the coppery taste of blood, hating that she could get no high from her own blood.

Maiden didn't look back, she tried to get to her feet but only made it halway before a kick in the gut from Andi "A mutant will outmatch a mangey little fox in strength, any day of the week." the green archer pointed out, enjoying watching her opponent struggle

"Shu-t...up." Maiden wheezed, still crawling towards the work station, her eyes landing on the weapons crate with the SHIELD emblem printed on it.

"You wanted to break my bones so badly you were blinded by revenge for good ol' Captain America...at least you got my nose." Andi gloated, following behind Maiden as she slowly crawled away from her "Now I'm going kill you slowly take that tail of yours as a trophy."

"Y-you haven't won..." Maiden coughed, she was less than ten feet away from the crate.

Maiden let out a snort, noticing the crate "So what's in there? A secret weapon, a comm link for back up...well let's see if it's anything fun I can torture you with." Andi stepped on the back of the vixen causing her to cry out in pain as she sauntered over to the work station where the crate rested, she eyed up the edges of the crate notching no pressure activated traps or any chemical residue on the clasps of the case.

"No..." Maiden whined, reaching her hand out in vain.

Andi's hands touched the box briefly to make sure no electrical current was coming from it, which there wasn't, before opening the latches and lifting the lid. She expected a bomb, a gun, a radio but nothing prepared her for this. It was a trap but this wasn't a weapon; she stepped back from the box, afraid of what was inside but her amber eyes unable to remove their gaze. She felt herself shaking as she looked at the object inside; a violin.

A violin she knew all too well, the violin that belonged to Luna Elise Wilde. "What?" she uttered, a hundred terrified thoughts racing through her mind were unexpectedly cut off by a sharp pain in the back of her leg like an insect bite, her hand zipped to the spot and pulled out what had stung her and gasped. She recognised the acupuncture type needles, it was made of carbon fibre and was the same design of Ronin's but only smaller, one half was painted purple, the same colour code for paralysis toxin. Andi fell to the ground in a crumbled pile, wide awake and terrified.

She heard two shots ring out, her eyes saw Ronin's sniper shots dent and slightly crack the windows of the ale house but they didn't shatter, they were bulletproof. "Don't think R-Ronin can save you now, SHIELD installed bulletproof glass in this building five days ago and someone's out there taking care of her as we speak." Maiden stuttered slightly, hobbling in front of Andi and tucking away the paralysis needles in a pouch on her belt.

"You whore, you cheated!" Andi screamed, wanting more than anything to choke the life out of the vixen but she couldn't move.

"Nah, I just used every weapon in my arsenal," Maiden breathed, her body aching as she reached into the box and pulled out the human sized violin and placed it front of Andi's face "and I used your biggest weakness against you. I knew you were too arrogant to kill me quick, you like to play with your targets and that case was too much of a temptation for you."

"So what now? You going to plunge an arrow in my throat like I did to that star spangled dick!? Just get on with it, I won't beg!" Andi spat, deliberately not looking at the violin. She could hear more gunfire outside, Ronin must've been fighting someone.

"I'll kill you in a minute but first, a little entertainment." Maiden sat on the floor next to the paralysed Andi, she then spoke into her comm "Wasp, hit the switch and begin phase two of the plan."

" **Got it."** Wasp's breathless voice crackled over the radio.

Suddenly a projector on top of the workstation came to life, the light shining on a nearby wall, Maiden turned Andi's head so she could see what was on display "What is this?" Andi hissed, as the computer loaded the video.

"Torture." Maiden whispered, knowing she wouldn't like what was about to happen either but as long as it hurt Andi it was worth the pain.

The video started and the first image seen was of a classroom, a music room to be precise and in the room were two young girls in fancy school uniforms happily playing instruments. One was white, had long ginger hair and was playing a violin, the other was sat down playing a keyboard, this girl looked south asian with jet black hair in a pixie cut. "Olivia..." Andi couldn't help but whisper but then she heard it, a classical music track playing over the video and her blood ran cold; it was Salut d'amour by Elgar.

"No." Andi gasped as the music carried on and next video clip came on, it was Christmas morning around the tree. The little ginger girl was in her PJs passing a raven-haired woman with pale skin a present, the woman laughs as she opens up the crudely wrapped present and pulls out a coffee mug, she shows it to the camera and written in purple paint is 'World's Greatest Mommy!'. She sets it down and hugs the little girl, kissing her atop the head.

"Stop." Andi gritted her teeth, her head started to throb as the next video clip came on. It was in hospital room, with a 'Happy Birthday' banner hung up, the same woman from the Christmas scene is now gaunt, bald and bedbound but laughing as the people around her present her with a birthday cake. The little ginger girl helps her mother blow out the candles as a tall red haired man and a petite woman with dyed silver hair pull party poppers covering the laughing mother and daughter in streamers "Fuck you...Fuck you!" Andi spat, her head starting to ache.

"Are you starting to feel it?" Luna asked, her own eyes filling up with tears, even though they were the human counterparts of Victoria, Nick and Judy this was still painful to watch. The vixen feeling an extra twinge of pain when the next clip came on with the human Luna sat on a sofa flanked by her new-born siblings in their car seats, seeing the brothers she never got to know cut deeply "I got Dragoness to contact the human Robbie Wilde-Savage and she asked her for that violin and all the home movies she had of Luna before you came and ruined her life. Plus I have it on good authority that Luna played this song with her mother the day she died, just like me."

"You think some videos and a little music gets to me!?" Andi yelled making her headache worse, noticing the gunfire had died down outside, she prayed Ronin would come bursting through the doors at any second, only to remember the heavy bolt and strong padlock she had put on it.

"Well judging from the tears in your eyes, I'd say it's working like a charm." Maiden countered, the next clip was playing, it was little Luna with a toy bow showing four toddlers her skills at knocking down soda cans.

"Go to hell! Luna needed me! She saw the Dawsons gunned down in cold blood by Rattigan, she wasn't ruthless enough to take him down but I was! I was the one that hired Ronin, I was the one who slashed that bastard's throat, I'm one who burnt his drug empire to the ground!" Andi ranted, her rage filled eyes leaking tears and head splitting.

"But you never let go, you never let her come back." Maiden replied, watching a clip of human Luna's thirteenth birthday, her face full of acne and mouth full of braces, dancing with the human Olivia and her other friends.

Andi looked at the birthday party with sad eyes, the pain in her head was making her dizzy but she still growled "That's Mommy's girl was weak, she'd never have a normal life if she came back, I killed those people but the courts would never see it that way!"

"Don't act like you tried to protect her, you're nothing but a virus, all you do is harm." Maiden said forcefully.

"...Ok...Ok..." Andi panted, the pain in her head becoming unbearable "You win, consider me tortured...just hurry up and kill me. Just do me a favour and make it quick."

Maiden got up off the floor and stood above Andi, she glared down at the helpless monster and said flatly "It's not going to be quick, it's going to be slow and painful."

"...You sure there's no trace of Andi of you? Because that's pretty twisted..." Andi grinned through her pain.

Maiden reached into another pouch on her belt and pulled out her murder weapons, two hypodermic syringes full of clear liquid and a tourniquet. As she crouched down and tightened the tourniquet around Andi's lifeless left arm she asked with fright "What the hell are those?"

"Venlafaxine in one and clozapine in the other, one's a drug for D.I.D and one is an antipsychotic." Maiden answered with a straight face, slapping Andi's arm causing the veins to come to the surface of the skin.

"But you said-" Andi began to ask, her eyes no longer focusing on the video but the pain in her head feeling like hell on earth.

"I said I was going to kill you and I am, it's going slow and painful, but with these drugs and a lot of psychiatric help I am going to kill the virus and save Luna Wilde's life." Maiden explained, selecting a vein and puncturing the venlafaxine hypo into it and slowly injected it.

"Just kill me! Just fucking kill me! Please! PLEASE!" Andi screamed for mercy, she didn't want to die, she wanted to picture Ronin's face but the pain in her head and the music in her ears stopped any such respite.

"I am killing you." Maiden said as she continued to inject the drugs, not wanting to think about the consequences of her actions but for now she took a little joy from this victory.

 **Chapter 40- Salut D'Amour.**

(AN/ What did you guys think? Please review and c ya soon...sorry no spoilers for next time)


	42. Comfort Food

(AN/Hey folks, it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Thank you as always for the reviews, reblogs, faves and follows on this fic. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 41- Comfort food**

Wasp wanted to look behind her so bad. She could hear the arrows whistling through the air, the trash talking and multiple explosions from within the G.R.O.G brewery storage house but her eyes fixed on something else; Ronin perched on top of a crane with a sniper rifle aiming through the windows of the building.

The Champion knew she could close the distance between her and the assassin in seconds but she knew from past encounters with the villainess that her sneaking suit was shock proof and a shot to the to the head from Wasp's blasters could prove fatal. The heroes needed both hitwomen alive in order to open the rift at the church, Wasp's task was to stop Ronin from trying to enter the building, activate the projector inside and send a distress signal to The Kestrel. Wasp's comm link crackled and soon came Dragoness' voice over the line " **Wasp, sit rep."**

"Still in position, Ronin is staying put but looking twitchy." Wasp whispered "Have you got a clear shot on her yet?"

" **Negative, she's crouched behind the driver's cab, all I can see is her rifle and her hair fluttering in the wind."** Dragoness replied **"I'm over a mile away and there are no other nests I can fire from."**

"Can't you just use your wings, fly up and take the shot?" Wasp queried in a low volume.

" **Oh gee-whiz! Why didn't I think of that?"** Dragoness snarked back sarcastically " **If I fly, I'll be shaking, it'll miss her. I'm going to have to wait for her to move."**

"Are you sure that weapon can't kill her?" Wasp fretted.

" **Relax, it's non-lethal. SHIELD 'Borrowed' this weapon from a Nova Corp officer visiting earth to collect a bounty, this sniper rifle can fire a stun ray from three miles away."** Dragoness assured.

"Wait a sec-" Wasp began to say as she saw Ronin tense up, her face filled with terror and her finger pulled the trigger. Two shots rang out, the high velocity rounds unable to penetrate the sophisticated ballistic proof window that Dragoness had installed.

" _Chikushou!"_ Ronin swore in Japanese, realising the rifle would be useless she set it down and unsheathed her blade, she jumped up the arm of the crane and was about to run across it when she caught a glimpse of something bright. Instinctively she ducked down, a streak of red light zipping over her head " _Sogeki-hei!?"_ she cursed in surprise, unable to see her attacker but could see three more red laser beams heading right for her. Ronin raced across the arm of the crane, dodging the shots before leaping to the roof of the store house and behind a sign for the brewery, out of the sniper's line of sight. As her feet landed on the flat roof she thought she could hear classical music coming from below but she had no time to focus, she felt an gut shaking blow hit her abdomen and she fell to the floor with a pained grunt, her attacker appeared ten feet away Wasp regrew back to her original size, in a fighting stance.

"Time to give it up, Ronin." Wasp stated loudly "The Champions, Ceartais and SHIELD are on their way!"

"You think I'll just abandon my wife!?" Ronin snapped, fighting through the pain and getting up, wondering if she could get to Wasp and behead her before she shrunk down "The vixen said she wanted a fight to the death but it was just a ruse, wasn't it?"

"No, Maiden is killing Andi as we speak. And that music your hearing, that's one of the murder weapons." Wasp replied, trying to stall the swordswoman, hoping that either Dragoness or her friends arrived in time to help her subdue Ronin.

"What?" Ronin sounded, her golden eyes darting around the roof, looking for a way into the building, she saw a maintenance access door that led down to her left.

"Plus some very heavy anti-physco-" Wasp started to speak but Ronin's hand whipped up, throwing a brace of shuriken directing at the teen heroine. Wasp quickly reduced her size to avoid the small blades that were aimed directly at her face, she saw Ronin run for the maintenance door using her powerful magnum to shoot the lock but they just pinged off.

"What..." Ronin gasped, facing back towards Wasp, expecting a counter attack.

"Blast proof doors as well, you're not getting in Ronin, now surrender and we can try and fix this mess you, Andi and Doom made." Wasp tried to reason, returning to normal size yet again.

Ronin ignored the plea and asked in a panicked manner "What was that about the music?"

"Maiden is killing Andi with the music and saving this world's Luna Wilde." Wasp replied, aware that Ronin could lunge at her any second with her katana.

"Luna Wilde?" Ronin whispered and then was quiet for a moment, her fearful face disappearing and replaced with one of amusement "You think you can kill off Andi's personality and bring back Luna?"

"Yes." Wasp replied plainly, expecting the scepticism.

"You...You're all fools. Andi can't be killed, it's been nearly a decade since Luna last had control, that girl is dead, only my beloved remains." Ronin smirked "I can't believe I was worried! She can handle whatever you throw at her, she'll escape and she'll come back to me."

Just then a sling ring portal opened up in the yard below, it's bright orange sparks illuminating the unlit area, Ronin took advantage of Wasp being distracted and dropped a concentrated smoke bomb from her belt. The entire roof was covered in grey smoke, causing Wasp to cough and splutter while Ronin made her escape "No!" Wasp yelled.

"Wasp!" A familiar voice cried out in worry, Wasp looked up to see Iron Heart flying above her "What the hell is going on!?"

"Ronin's still here, we need to catch her before she escapes!" Wasp answered, now flying above the smoke "Me, you and Snowguard will search for her, the others will check in with Maiden."

"Wait, what's going on with Maiden-" Iron Heart tried to ask before being cut off.

"Just look for Ronin!" Wasp implored, zipping towards the brewery complex's exit.

Iron Heart saw no sense in arguing and called out to the group below her who had just stepped through the portal "Snow Guard with me, the rest of you take this building, Maiden's in trouble!"

The only Champions left in the group were Viv and Brawn who were already rushing to the store house with Team Ceartais plus Sirius and Arthur Knight armed with Excalibur. "What in God's name is going on!? Do you know anything about this?" Scarlet asked with frustration and fear, running ahead.

"Not a clue, Luna said jack shit to me." Spitfire replied, hating the fact of being left in the dark.

Bullet then caught the sound of the music before anyone else, uttering in confusion "There's classical music playing inside?"

"Music?" Scarlet asked gruffly, still running towards the doors with the others, she focused her long lapin ears and detected the music, she stumbled a little when she realised the what piece of music was playing. 'Salut d'amour' Luna had told her about it so many times, the last piece of music she played with her birth mother before she died and the same piece of music she hallucinated hearing when she deliberately gave Chen a stroke. She looked at Roar and yelled "Smash that door down, now!"

Roar didn't argue, he charged ahead and rammed his shoulder into the first set of double doors and then through the blast proof and padlocked one, tearing it off it's hinges. The heroes raced into the store house and saw the expected carnage, scraps of metal kegs, broken glass and ale soaking the floor but they what they didn't expect was the state of Maiden and Andi. The vixen was sat down with her legs crossed with the incapacitated Andi's head in her lap, the mutant woman's eyes glazed over, nose bloodied and lips whispering something that was barely audible but Bullet heard it "Where...where...where..."

"Welcome to the party." Maiden said with teary amber eyes, she looked at the heroes, all of them looking at Andi with caution so much so that most of them had drawn their weapons ready to fight "Did Wasp capture Ronin?"

"Uh...no." Brawn answered, utterly flummoxed by the situation he found himself in "Iron Heart and Snowguard are helping her."

"Shit...looks like Dragoness missed her shot." Maiden sighed, stroking Andi's hair.

"Lu...what's happening?" Scarlet asked, carefully taking a step forward while Arthur noticed Maiden's bow and picked it up from among the broken beer bottles.

"I'm killing Andi." Maiden answered.

"Lu! Did you poison her?" Scarlet asked, aghast.

Viv floated towards Maiden and Andi, she scanned the red headed mutant's body and summarised "She has no life-threatening injuries and no toxins in her system, I do however detect a high level of anti-psychotic medication."

Mage then realised and gasped "You're trying to treat her."

"Not treat, kill. I'm killing the virus and saving Luna Wilde." Maiden corrected.

"You've planned this? You went behind our backs?" Bullet asked with bitterness, lowering her guns.

"Yes." Maiden answered plainly.

"Christ, Lu." Scarlet breathed, trying to process what was happening.

"We'll talk about this back on The Kestrel but I think you have to tell Alice about this first." Spitfire spoke.

"Olivia?" Andi suddenly said, looking up at Spitfire and babbling "No...no, Olivia died..."

Spitfire looked down at Andi and couldn't believe she was feeling sympathy for the assassin "What are you going to do with her?" she asked Maiden.

"Dragoness has arranged for her to be transported to a secure mental health hospital." Maiden answered, still stroking Andi's hair and wondering how easy it could've been for her to become like her mutant counterpart.

000

The three Champions didn't find Ronin. By the time they had searched the area around the brewery, a highly secure SHIELD convoy had arrived ready to take Andi away. Dragoness, Wasp and Maiden were on the receiving end of some judging stares and sharp words from the heroes. The Champions decided not to discuss the matter any further until the next day when Spiderman and Ms Marvel would be there to talk with them. Spiderman was on patrol in his native Brooklyn and Ms Marvel was out protecting Jersey City.

When everyone arrived back on The Kestrel it was quiet, the night crew for the hele-frigate was a lot less than the day time crew and it seemed a lot calmer than when the sun was up. That was except for the hallway where Ceartais' cabins were "Get the fuck out of this room!" Alice bellowed, throwing a pile of Luna's clothes out into the hallway.

"Alice, please, let's talk about this." Luna implored before being shoved out of the door by her much shorter wife.

"I don't want to talk to you, I don't want to see you, you lying witch!" Alice raged, tears betraying her furious eyes, before marching back into the room and grabbing Luna's toiletries bag.

"Sweetheart, I had to do this..." Luna tried to explain, fully aware that the rest of that Hannah and Robyn were watching this exchange from their doorway.

"Don't, just don't. I don't want to hear any more of your lies!" Alice wailed, throwing the bag into the pile of clothes at Luna's feet before sobbing "I don't want you anywhere near me or MY children."

"Alice..." Luna began to cry, watching Alice walk back into the room.

Hannah stepped forward and put a hand on Luna's shoulder and said "I'll stay with her tonight, make sure she's ok." while Robyn started picking up the clothes hastily and tossing them into her and Hannah's room.

"Come on Lu, best leave her to cool off." Robyn ushered, guiding her big sister away as Hannah shut the door.

"Right..." Luna sniffed, thinking that she was about to be brought into Robyn's room but was being led down the hall, she didn't question it, she knew what was about to happen.

Robyn led Luna by the paw into the mess hall, there were no humans in sight, only Olivia, Kion and Clara. All looking at Luna with looks she couldn't fully decipher but she knew that disappointment was part of what they were feeling. "Where's Kodi and Knight?" Robyn asked, her droopy ears displaying her mood.

"Arthur's keeping an eye on Jason," Clara answered, fixing her glasses "And Kodi's..."

Kodi answered Clara's question by opening up a sling ring portal and stepping through carrying two bags from KFC in one paw and a stack of three pizza boxes in the other "Two mega buckets with fries, gravy and shakes plus three pizzas, one veggie, one cheese-gasm and a seafood supreme." He listed as he lay the food on the nearest table.

Luna didn't wait on ceremony, she grabbed one of the KFC bags, retrieved a bucket, some gravy and one of the chocolate milkshakes. She tore off the lid quickly, picked up a fried chicken thigh and began to feast on it while she was still crying. Everyone else looked on in bewilderment as Luna devoured the chicken, it's only when tossed the bone away she said "Alice kicked me out of our room."

"No surprise there." Olivia sighed, walking across the table top to the veggie pizza "Clara could you cut me off a wee mouse-sized piece?"

Clara nodded and did as Olivia asked while Kodi asked the question that everyone wanted to ask "Luna, what the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking about bringing Andi down." Luna answered, not looking the wolf in the eye.

"Going in alone, against a mammal bigger and stronger than you and relying on some crazy plan." Kodi bristled, grabbing a slice of the seafood supreme.

"Look I know what it looks like but my plan was perfect, what's more, it worked." Luna replied, grabbing another piece of chicken while everyone else began to chow down as well.

"Luna we saw that room, it was trashed, your bow was thrown to the other side of the room, you could've been killed." Olivia fretted.

"I was well aware of the risk." Luna said, her eyes still crying as she ate.

"Why didn't you clue us in? We could've helped you." Robyn asked, dipping a chicken leg into some gravy. The ginger hybrid was less angry, her emotions were more tied to worry even though the danger had passed.

"I couldn't risk anyone else getting hurt, plus if everyone knew then SHIELD would know and they have more leaks than the Titanic, Andi would've found out." Luna answered almost robotically, she had been expecting this question and had rehearsed the answer.

"Liar." A voice accused, it was quiet, calm yet there was venom. Everyone turned to the source, all them of them a little surprised who it was; Kion Priderock.

"What did you just call me?" Luna asked, finally looking up.

"I called you a liar, Luna." Kion clarified, causing a spell of silence to fall over the group "You could've told us what you were planning and told The Champions too, they would've kept to secret just like when they helped us spring Arthur from that SHIELD containment cell."

Luna took the reply on board and responded in a civil manner as not to aggravate the lion "After the attack on the Manhattan safehouse I wasn't sure who in SHIELD we could trust, I had to keep a secret so it could never get leaked."

"Stop lying." Kion said with a little more force "We all know the reason Andi and Ronin found the safehouse was the tracker implanted in Jason's tooth."

"What do you want me to say, Kion? I've already told you that I kept you all in the dark to make sure this plan would go off without a hitch." Luna replied, not remembering seeing her friend so angry when not in 'Roar' mode.

"Why'd you pick Dragoness and Wasp for your plan?" Kion asked, crossing his arms.

"Alright, big guy. Lay off, can't you see she's upset?" Olivia tried to defuse the situation.

"I'm not going to drop this, Olivia." Kion replied curtly before turning his attention back to Luna "Answer my question, why Wasp and Dragoness?"

Luna set her food down and answered "I knew I could trust Dragoness not to spill the beans, she wanted Andi and Ronin brought to justice more than I did, after what they did to her husband and her wing. Wasp on the other hand was not part of the plan, she heard me speaking to Andi at the Frost Rooms after she escaped behind bullet proof glass, Wasp thought I was physically going to murder someone. Nadia confronted me and Dragoness about it, we explained what the plan actually was to her and convinced her to help us."

Kion seemed more frustrated the more he learnt but yet he pressed on "When did you cook up this plan?"

Luna took a second, dried her eyes and answered "When I was pulled away from Captain America's body, Steve Rogers was a good person and I was going to avenge him."

"So before they attacked the safehouse? You just told us you kept this from us because of what happened in Manhattan!" Kion called out, his voice becoming louder and more bitter.

"I..." Luna began but had no follow up.

"Tell the truth Luna. YOU wanted Andi all to yourself. YOU had to be the one to challenge her. YOU had to be the one to fight her. YOU had to be the one who put those drugs in her veins." Kion accused, now looming over the vixen.

Robyn raised her paw and touched Kion's arm, then warned "Dude, you're one of my closest friends but if you don't back the hell off I'm going to make you."

"How are you not mad at her!?" Kion growled.

"I am...kinda...look I can see where she was coming from. Luna saw a version of herself that she wanted to save from Andi, Luna's defeated her own demons but she knew the human her couldn't beat so Lu helped her out." Robyn rambled.

"Her arrogance and selfishness just blew the mission!" Kion yelled, pointing the finger at Luna, who was about to start crying again.

"She didn't blow the mission, she caught Andi and she's on her way to a psychiatric unit!" Robyn defended her sister.

"Not her vendetta, I mean the real mission, saving the mammals and getting everyone back to Zootopia." Kion made clear, looking past Robyn and giving the eldest Wilde daughter a dirty look.

"How-" Luna began to counter but was halted by Kodi.

"You knew for two days that we needed both Ronin and Andi's hand prints and fresh DNA to open the rift, without them we can't get on the Cauldron or back home." Kodi hated to point out.

"I got Andi alive, Dragoness and Wasp screwed up catching Ronin." Luna made an excuse through her whimpers, feeling her paw pads sweating.

"You should have included us, then we would've caught her. I could've used my magic, Viv could've used her tech. There are so many things we could've helped on this mission with but you didn't let us." Kodi replied, not wanting to feel so angry at Luna but it was impossible "So I have to ask; was it because you don't trust us or was it because you wanted revenge?"

"Kodi, that isn't fair." Olivia said, eyeing the distressed Luna and feeling a need to protect her emotions.

"Answer the question, Luna." Kion piled on.

Luna felt shame wash over her, she looked at everyone and croaked "Revenge. I wanted revenge."

Clara felt incredibly awkward, she was engrossed in the exchange she had eaten three slices of Chesse-gasm pizza in quick succession, she knew the tension could boil over at any point so she tried to help "Ok, let's all take a step back, everyone's upset about tonight but there's no need to esc-"

Kion slammed his fist down on the table, shaking it and making Olivia fall down while everyone else jumped a little, the kind natured feline had never acted in such a manner before. He crouched down so he was closer to eye level with the archer before saying in a cold voice "I hope you enjoyed your vengeance but I pray you remember the price. It cost us the mission, it cost us our way home, it cost me seeing my son and girlfriend again, it cost Hannah and Robyn adopting their little boy and becoming a family and it cost you safe passage for your wife and those kits in her tummy. So I hope you enjoyed it."

"Kion, I'm sorry." Luna cried, the words hurting more than any blade or punch.

Kion rose to his feet, picked up the seafood supreme pizza box and started walking out of the mess hall "You chose the name Maiden to honour Marian, well congratulations you're just like her, your lies and secrets hurt everyone around you."

"Shut it, Kion!" Robyn snapped, grabbing a paw full of fries and slinging them at the lion, hitting the back of his mane but he didn't turn back, he just kept on walking.

"You're like The Maid in another way Luna, I never trusted her and now I'll never trust you again." Kion stated, walking out the exit, his words chilling the crying fox.

Luna watched Kion leave, knowing that things would never be the same between them. With one choice Luna had lost one of her best friends and possibly damaged her marriage beyond repair leaving her with the question; was it worth it?

000

Dragoness didn't know how to feel. Victorious, sad, satisfied...she knew should be feeling something like that but right now she didn't know how to feel. She was in a high security ward of Bellevue psychiatric hospital looking through ballistic proof glass into a heavily guarded hospital room where Andi laid, strapped to a hospital bed, with two syringe drivers full of meds were pumping into her. The ruthless warrior now looked meek, confused and miserable, the pair of black eyes resulting from the broken nose added to her weakened appearance. The burn on her hand was now bandaged up, while she looked helplessly at the nurses and doctors tending to her.

"I guess congratulations are in order." Coulson's calm voice pulled Dragoness out of her focus, the winged inhuman turning to her left to see her colleague standing beside her.

"We finally have her." Dragoness told Coulson and herself.

"But do you really have her? Or do you have Luna Wilde?" Coulson asked critically.

"It doesn't matter, either way Andi can't hurt anyone else ever again." Dragoness answered, subconsciously stroking her wedding ring.

"...Zoe, you know Hill won't be happy about this? You went behind her back and you missed your shot at Ronin, Doom's plan could still hurt thousands of people." Coulson said, knowing she wouldn't want to hear it but it needed to be said.

"I know what's going to happen. I'll be court martialled but they'll see the circumstances and let me off with no drop in rank but I'm probably never going to see active duty again, I'm going to be at a desk for the rest of my career." Dragoness theorised.

"I could appeal on your behalf, look I know we've had our differences but you're a fantastic agent, SHIELD needs more people like you." Coulson suggested.

"Thanks Phil, but don't bother, I'm getting kind of sick of combat anyway. I've sacrificed my body and lost my husband because of this shit. Maybe desk life won't be so bad." Dragoness accepted "Either way, after we catch Ronin and the mammals are back in Zootopia I'll be applying for a transfer."

"So what now?" Coulson sighed.

"I already have my people hunting Ronin but for now I have promise to keep." Dragoness said, picking up a brown paper bag resting at her feet, she went to the secure door to the room and let the security system scan her eyes before speaking into the microphone "Special Agent Zoe Nightfall-Rojek." the door then opened and she entered the room, there were three armed guards inside complementing the dozen outside the room in the hallway. Dragoness approached one of the doctors and asked "Can I speak to her?"

The doctor, a skinny man in his mid-sixties replied "If this is an official line of questioning my patient still hasn't been read her rights or been assigned a lawyer."

"It's nothing like that, you can stay with me to make sure I don't ask her anything that could incriminate her." Dragoness assured, holding tightly onto the paper bag.

"You have five minutes." The doctor aggreed.

Dragoness approached the bedside, Andi's amber eyes were hazy but she was looking at the armed guards with confusion. Dragoness didn't know who she would be talking to so she opened with "Ma'am, can you tell me your name?"

Andi turned to look at Dragoness and slurred "D...Dr. Luna W-Wilde, where am I?"

Dragoness didn't know if this was Andi playing a trick or if she was really speaking to Luna but to be on the safe side she played along "You're in Bellevue psychiatric hospital, these doctors and nurses are looking after you."

"Bellevue?" Andi gave a quiet gasp "Why am I in New York? W-why aren't I back in Burbank?"

"Dr. Wilde...a lot has happened. Now this is going to hard for you to hear but-" Dragoness tried to ease but was cut off.

"She came didn't she? She did something...she, no, I did something bad?" Andi struggled, tears forming in her eyes.

"Dr. Wilde, please try not to think about it." Dragoness replied, starting to think that coming inside the room was a mistake.

"No, no no...I remember seeing Olivia's body and," Andi began to babble but then her yes went wide, focusing on something behind Dragoness before crying out "Oh god she's behind you!"

Dragoness looked behind her only to see a confused looking Coulson through the other side of the glass realising that either Andi was acting or Luna Wilde was hallucinating "Dr. Wilde..." she tried to comfort.

"She's saying things, awful things! Why does she look like me? Why? I'm not her, I'm not her, I'm her!" Andi spoke manically.

"Please, Ma'am, Luna is distressed, can you leave this until the morning?" The Bellevue Doctor tried to usher the inhuman away from the bedside.

"I understand." Dragoness accepted but held up the paper bag "But I've got something that might make her feel better."

She opened up the bag for the Doctor to look in, he nodded and allowed his patient to be given the item. Dragoness reached inside the bag and pulled out a plushie toy. It was old and a little tattered, a clear sign it was much loved by a child, there were a few stitches on it where that had been tears in the past but it didn't matter when Andi saw the plushie red dragon she fought past her tears and ignored her hallucinations "Mr. Scales!" Andi exclaimed.

Andi's wrists were bound to the bed so Dragoness placed the old toy next to Andi's head before saying "Your little sister Robbie made me promise I'd give that to you, she told me that you would give it to her and your brothers whenever they had nightmares, you used to say Mr. Scales would protect them from the bad dreams. I think Mr. Scales can help protect you from whatever bad things you're seeing."

"T-thank you." Andi sobbed, despite still looking fraught with stress there was relief in her eyes when she looked at her old toy and this look made Dragoness finally accept that she wasn't talking to Andi but to Luna Wilde.

It could almost be a heart-warming scene to most onlookers but for one person observing this scene it was a nightmare. Ronin was across the street, perched on a fire escape, she had managed to access the security camera and audio feed through one of the few autohack programs she had her arsenal, it wasn't enough to get past the doors but at least she could scout the area for a rescue attempt. But there wasn't going to be a rescue. Ronin had been watching Andi for over an hour and wondering why on earth she wasn't attacking the medical staff or the SHIELD guards, there was no way Maiden's plan actually worked. But when she heard the way Andi spoke to Dragoness she knew that all was lost, Andi was excellent at many things but acting and lying wasn't one of them. Ronin knew this wasn't a pantomime, Andi's mannerisms, her tone of voice and sharp gaze were nowhere to be seen, the woman she was looking at wasn't her wife, it was Luna Wilde.

Ronin turned off her tablet, unable to look at the footage any longer, it burned her too much. Grief and anger swirled inside her; her wife was dead, the life they had planned together was gone, the children they wanted to adopt would never know her embrace and the cause of this tragedy; Maiden. Ronin needed to hurt her, far more than what she had done to Andi but first she needed to take care of one thing. Ronin got out her phone and selected Doom's number before laying the device down on the fire escape, a few moments later a hologram of Doom on his throne appeared, lighting up the dark alleyway.

" **Ronin, why are you calling and why do you not bow before Doom?"** Doom simmered.

"Andi's dead, the deal's off, I'm ending the contract." Ronin stated flatly.

" **What!? What are you talking about!?"** Doom's voice boomed, rising from his throne.

"SHIELD have her, they've pumped full of drugs, Andi's gone and Luna's back...my wife is dead." Ronin explained bitterly "And it's all because you opened the fucking rift to Zootopia and brought that vixen here!"

" **You dare speak to Doom with such disrespect, one of your eyes shall be the price for your words."** Doom promised.

"We know you haven't got the balls to come after me, not when your plan is teetering on failure, take your threats and your deal and shove it up your ass!" Ronin seethed as she kicked the phone off the fire escape, before it hit the ground it exploded, caused by the trigger Doom had implanted within it. The sound of the explosion alerted the SHIELD agents surrounding Bellevue and they were already scrambling towards her direction. Ronin used her wrist mounted grappling hook and shot off to the rooftops, already imaging her revenge against Maiden.

000

Ms Marvel had woke up to two dozen messages on her secure Champions smartphone all telling her about Andi's capture and Ronin's escape as well as Maiden, Dragoness and Wasp going behind everyone's back. The polymorph had been trying to avoid stress since the attack on The Frost Rooms but she knew she couldn't avoid going up to The Kestrel today, it was time for her be a leader and tackle this issue. The inhuman knew that Kodi was likely stressed by this situation too and would've been up most of the night so she didn't want to call him to make a sling ring portal, so she decided to get transport to the hele-frigate the old fashioned way. She would have to hitch a ride on a SHIELD quin jet to the Kestrel, she would've gone to the New Jersey base but she wasn't on friendly terms with any of the agents there so it would have to be the New York base where Coulson resided.

Ms Marvel did her usual trick of hopping on top of one the buses that went from Jersey City to New York, the 10.15 am bus had just come out of the Holland tunnel and was driving through the streets of Soho when Ms Marvel, who had been playing a game on her phone, spotted something in her peripheral vision. She looked up from her phone and the bus had already turned a corner, making her question what she thought she had seen "Couldn't be..." she whispered, but she had to make sure. Ms Marvel stood up and stretched her left arm to grab onto a traffic light before swinging around the corner and landing outside a Mexican food truck parked up and got confirmation of what she saw "You've got to be kidding me..."

Stood outside the food truck was Alice Wilde, the short statured and heavily pregnant rabbit was gaining some funny looks from other patrons of the food truck as she tucked into a bean burrito, her fur was scruffy and ungroomed, there was guacamole on her cybernetic arm and her golden eyes with bloodshot from crying. She looked up at Ms Marvel and gave an irritated sigh " _Bonjour_ Ms. Marvel."

"Alice, what are you doing here, why aren't you on The Kestrel?" Ms Marvel asked, sounding worried and confused.

"Eating my fourth bean burrito of the morning." Alice replied before licking the excess guacamole off her prosthetic arm, not caring how uncivilised she looked.

"No, I mean what are you doing in Soho? Ronin is still at large." Ms Marvel fretted, noticing Alice was wearing a retro Space Invaders t-shirt but it was pregnancy themed with 'Belly Invaders', she'd would've chuckled if she wasn't worried.

"I'd rather be down here than up there with that liar!" Alice snapped before taking another bite of her burrito.

"Look I know things are tense between you and Luna but there's no need to put yourself in unnecessary danger, just come with me and we'll get you back up there...wait, how did you get down here in the first place?" Ms Marvel wondered, thinking that no one would help Alice put herself in harm's way.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Alice smirked childishly before rambling "My wife lied to me, went into a stupid fight only telling Dragoness and Wasp and now it's all come to light Robyn and Olivia are siding with her!? Screw them, screw SHIELD and screw The Champions."

"You don't mean that." Ms Marvel cooed, crouching down to the bunny.

"Oh yes I do! I can't trust anyone on that ship!" Alice cried with her mouth full of food.

"How did you pay for all this food?" Ms Marvel asked, trying to steer the conversation to something less upsetting.

"I stole Dragoness' wallet." Alice admitted.

"Alice!" Ms Marvel scorned, sounding like a disappointed parent.

"Oh kiss my cotton tail." Alice waved off with tears in her eyes "I'm pissed off, I'm pregnant and I'm hungry. You do not want to test me today!"

"Regardless, I can't let you stay here, you're in danger out here in the open." Ms Marvel stated, crossing her arms.

"No I'm not, I called for a bodyguard." Alice replied, still chewing on the burrito.

"Bodyguard? What Bodyguard?" Ms Marvel asked, growing frustrated.

Then her answer came "Ok, six more burritos, a dozen tacos and enough churros to put anyone into diabetic shock. Thank you, Dragoness." A happy voice declared, throwing Alice a wallet which she caught with ease.

"Oh no." Ms Marvel groaned, knowing who the voice belonged to, she turned to face the food truck and saw Deadpool standing with three plastic bags full of food.

"And you thought you'd seen the last of little old me." Deadpool smiled and winked under his mask.

(AN/ Just when you thought you'd never see another Marvel character reappear, it's Deadpool! Ok please don't hate me I'm going somewhere with this. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on TBM; Ms Marvel tries to wrangle Alice back to The Kestrel, Luna laments her choices, Lylla discovers some odd truths about the multiverse and Doom marches onward with his plan. Please review and c ya soon...)


	43. Marital Strife

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror on the one year anniversary of this fic! Thank you so much to all you amazing readers and I want to give special thanks to the TAS dev team as we finish off the last chapters of this fic and move onto new projects together! So without further ado, let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 42- Marital strife.**

Lylla knew what she was doing could get her in trouble but at this point she didn't care. Ever since she saw Rocket through the Cauldron security feed her mind had been on nothing else. It had been a couple of hours since the MCB and Camelot had begun surveillance on the apartment Dr. McCoy was being kept prisoner in and she had managed to keep her cool so far and no one had noticed Rocket on the feed the MCB tech team had hacked into.

Both teams were in the office building across the street, with Camelot handling the strike teams and the bureau taking care of communication and computer surveillance. But what was on the computer didn't interest them, they seemed more concerned with hearing a voice that wasn't McCoy's in the apartment. The owner of the voice had stood in the doorway so Camelot's snipers could not get a look at him through the window, the voice had been male and deep saying "Be ready, Doom will bring you your first test subject soon." before vanishing. They had tried to call Beast on the smartphone they gave him but the blue mutant had turned it off, opting to work at an even faster pace.

While everyone else was distracted about how to contact McCoy, Lylla sat down at the empty workstation of one of the tech guys and started to search through the files they had hacked into from McCoy's computer. She had found files on prisoners but they were all titled with a strange code so she was forced to open each file one by one, she had gone through eleven files until she found the one she was looking for. The Raccoon's mugshot appeared on screen along with a brief summary of the hero, Lylla focused on the photo for a few moments noting all his fur markings and the shape of his face, this raccoon looked identical to her deceased husband. She forced herself not to cry and read the information in the file but when saw that this doppelganger was also called Rocket she knew this could be no sort of coincidence. She glanced around and saw her fellow agents were still fussing over contacting the mutant in the adjacent building, making sure no one was watching her read this file.

 _Designation: Rocket_

 _Age: Unknown_

 _Species: Genetically altered Raccoon_

 _Home Planet: Halfworld_

 _Skills/Powers: Genius intellect especially when it comes to armaments, cyborg components help with reflexes and reaction times, highly skilled aviator and marksman._

 _Info: Member of The Guardians of The Galaxy and part time bounty hunter, Rocket is the team's engineering and weapon expert. He is known for his short temper, playing practical jokes and being an expert at escaping from confinement, since he's been on the Cauldron he's tried to escape on numerous occasions. Doom had considered killing this fool but he's much more useful as a bargaining chip against his fellow heroes if the worst comes to the worst._

 _Rocket got onto the Cauldron via the same rift Professor Bloom had escaped through with the idiotic intention of capturing the ship's helmsman Tazerface. Once Doom had subdued Rocket and thrown him into a cell, this obsession with Tazerface was investigated. It would appear the slovenly bastard had killed Rocket's mate over a decade ago, another bounty hunter from Halfworld, an otter by the name of Lylla._

"What are you up to?" A puzzled voice enquired causing Lylla's sights to snap to the voice's source, a few feet away from the workstation, out of sight of what was on the monitor was Jack Savage.

"I, uh..." Lylla sounded, she was completely stumped, she couldn't think up an excuse.

"She's following my orders, sir." Aleks replied nonchalantly, walking up behind Lylla and glancing at the screen "I thought it'd be a good idea to take a look through the data on Dr. McCoy's computers to check on the well being of the kidnapped mammals." The silver fox fixing his glasses as he lied with ease.

The striped buck bought the lie and shrugged "Well it beats worrying about contacting McCoy or Beast or whatever he calls himself. Give me a shout if you find any new information."

"Yes, sir." Aleks and Lylla replied simultaneously.

As soon as Jack walked back over to the surveillance experts, Aleks whispered to Lylla "Let's go to the kitchen and grab ourselves some coffee."

Lylla clicked off the file and followed Aleks into the office's small kitchen where some bureau underling had left some snacks and a few pots of coffee brewing, lucky for the agents no one else in there with them. "That raccoon you were looking at, I've seen his photo on your desk...is it who I think it is?" Aleks got straight to the point, keeping his volume low, knowing how sensitive Jack's hearing was.

"Not...not exactly." Lylla answered, still trying to come to terms with what she had just read.

"Because that raccoon looks an awful lot like Rick Mantlo, your husband." Aleks called out.

"Rocket." Lylla corrected.

"Yes his nickname at the bureau was Rocket." Aleks replied.

"No, this one is just called Rocket, he doesn't even have a surname. That file I read was about my husband's double." Lylla answered, knowing how ridiculous it all sounded, but given the circumstances anything was possible.

"But all the doubles on the other earth are these human creatures." Aleks reacted, looking confused.

"I know but Rocket's still a raccoon and he's on the Cauldron." Lylla worried aloud.

"I'm not even going to ask how he got there but is there another you on the ship with him?" Aleks asked, his mind being blown.

"No...I'm de-, I mean she's dead, Rocket's after her killer, the pilot of The Cauldron." Lylla clarified and corrected herself.

"Well this situation just got a lot more complicated." Aleks groaned, scratching his muzzle.

"Why'd you lie for me when Jack questioned me?" Lylla asked, still feeling uneasy with the new information.

Aleks sighed before answering "The only reason Jack is letting me stay close to this case is because you're keeping me in check about freaking out over Zoe."

"So if Jack finds out I'm also emotionally compromised we'll both be kicked off the case?" Lylla assumed.

"Listen I know I'm acting selfish but I don't care, I need Zoe in my life so I'm not going to lose any sleep by keeping this from Jack." Aleks answered truthfully.

Lylla would usually berate her superior but she empathised with his desperation. These six years without Rocket in her life had been the worst thing she had gone through, she now how had the chance to see him again and she wasn't going to let it slide "Looks like we're in the same boat, we've both got everything to lose." she said with a depressed tone.

000

The Champions had not made the short walk across the flight deck from their mobile bunker to the Kestrel's lab, according to a text from Spiderman they were waiting for Ms Marvel to arrive. Ceartais and The Champions needed to discuss the deception surrounding the capture of Andi and if there were going to be any ramifications for the guilty party. But right now Luna didn't care about a team suspension or even being booted off all together, right now the vixen was sat on a desk chair in the lab with a sullen expression thinking about Alice. "Do you think she's going to leave me?" she asked aloud, but she had asked everyone this question half a dozen times since last night.

"Don't be silly." Clara fretted, not looking up from her tablet, she was reanalysing old rift data.

"You're jumping to conclusions, she's just pissed off with you that's all." Olivia assured, stood on a raised platform and calibrating Spitfire's thrusters.

"And you're both about to be mothers, she won't leave you before the babies are born." Robyn added with a sympathetic tone, getting up from her chair and hugging her sister, the ginger hybrid had lost count of how many times she had hugged her big sister since last night.

"But she said-" Luna began to moan, her stomach gurgling from the high volume of junk food she had consumed.

"Her kits, we know, you told us." Robyn sighed sadly "She was just lashing out."

"Maybe she's right though, maybe I don't deserve to be a Mom to those kits." Luna wallowed, sinking deeper into her chair "I did this, it's all my fault...and I haven't just lost Alice. Kion, Kodi and Hannah hate my guts too."

"Kodi's doesn't hate you," Clara eased "he's just hanging out with Kion, trying to get him to calm down." the she wolf was half fibbing, when they had returned to their room last night her boyfriend had voiced his frustrations with the archer.

"And Hannah doesn't hate you...she's just, um, well let's just say she doesn't agree with the way you handled things." Robyn tried to sugarcoat.

"So half of the team has sided with Alice and you lot are standing by me?" Luna figured, taking hold of her tail and stroking it for comfort.

"This isn't about sides, Lu. Everyone's emotions are just a little fried right now." Robyn replied, her long ears going droopy.

"And just between us I think Kion went too far last night." Olivia voiced her opinion.

"No, he didn't, he had every right to be mad at me...I think we take Kion for granted. Part of me still sees Kion as the cub I used to babysit but he's probably the most grown up out of all the team, he has a son and a loving girlfriend back in Zootopia, yet he came with us anyway to help, thinking there was a way home. But now I've ruined the best hope at getting everyone home, safe and sound." Luna said, remembering Kion's furious face from last night and shuddering.

"You haven't ruined it, we still have that rift in the Jersey parking lot that we came through, sure it's weakened but as long as we get through everyone at once it'll be fine." Robyn replied.

Clara then looked at the sisters awkwardly and said in an equally awkward manner "Actually..."

"Are you kidding me?" Robyn groaned at the scientist.

"Ignore her, tell us what you know Clara." Olivia prompted, setting her tools down and listening intently.

"I've been going over the data from the Jersey rift and it's losing power at a faster rate than anticipated." Clara answered, holding up her tablet and showing everyone the data that only Olivia could actually decipher.

"But how? Shuri said it'd only get weaker if anyone passed through it." Robyn asked, sounding anxious.

"My theory is because it hasn't got a stabiliser dish like the one in the subway station, that thing didn't just mask it's energy signature it kept the rift's energy from gradually dispersing around it, only sticking to the radius of the dish." Clara explained.

"So what would happen if we tried to get all the missing mammals plus us through the rift?" Luna asked, having a feeling what the answer would be but she had to know.

"It might not be strong enough to get us all home, my prediction is we could get through about half of the mammals through before the rift became unstable." Clara said, hating to add to Luna's woes.

"So to get everyone back safely we need Ronin...oh god, what have I done?" Luna lamented.

Robyn was already hugging her big sister despite her own anger at Luna, Olivia was about to say something but was halted when a very tired looking Dragoness entered the Kestrel's lab "Say you wouldn't happen to know who trashed my office, stole my wallet and wrote 'Lying Bitch' on the wall?" she asked, clearly frazzled from the last twelve hours.

"Wait, what?" Clara scoffed.

Olivia looked up at Dragoness and replied dryly "I'm guessing she's short, white fur, gold eyes, got a few scars, cybernetic arm and heavily pregnant."

"Wow Alice really is furious." Robyn commented with slight worry.

"Look I don't care about the office or the graffiti, I just need my wallet back. It's got some photos in it that are precious to me. Do you know where she is?" Dragoness asked, crossing her arms.

"In her cabin." Luna answered.

"No, she's not. She's nowhere aboard, I figured you guys would know." Dragoness responded.

"Wait she's not here!?" Luna gasped, rising from her chair "Then where the hell is she?!"

000

"Wade, veggie taco me!" Alice called from the sofa, pausing her game of Mortal Kombat and resting the controller on her baby bump.

" _Oui Madame."_ Deadpool replied, tossing Alice one of the wrapped up tacos from the carrier bag on his very messy desk.

The former assassin and the merc with the mouth had moved from the food truck to Deapool's office around the corner. It was old and shabby, the décor and furniture looked like it was from the seventies, the only modern thing in the office was the tv and game console he had set up in the corner. Alice had created herself a little nest of blankets and cushions with her sheathed Katana resting on it's own small cushion. Pacing the length of the office was a clearly fretful Ms Marvel, looking at Alice and commenting "How can you just sit there, playing videogames and eating tacos?"

"With incredible ease." Alice smirked, unwrapping the paper around the taco.

"Urgh, you know what I mean! You're in danger here." Ms Marvel half growled before turning to Deadool and marching over to his desk "You're supposed to be protecting her, surely there's somewhere safer than this office?"

"Totally, I have this super secret bunker with lazer turrets and a super advanced security system. I offered it to Samurai Jack-Rabbit over there but she said she'd prefer to be within walking distance of a food truck and a bodega." Deadpool replied, going back to cleaning his swords "She's my customer and the customer's always right."

"She's paying you with money she stole from a SHIELD agent." Ms Marvel scowled.

"Why so pissy Big M? Is it because MCU is dragging their feet about giving you your own movie? I had to wait eighteen years for my first movie appearance and they sewed my mouth shut and that poor bun bun over there hasn't been given a fleshed out origin story from Ziegelzieg yet." Deadpool fake cried "I wanna' read Prey Upon so badly!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Alice asked in a deadpan manner, munching on the taco.

"Ignore him, he had brain tumours before he got his powers, those tumours are still there and make him say crazy stuff like we're all in a comic book or something." Ms Marvel dismissed.

"Actually we're in a fanfiction at the moment and between you and me I think this third instalment sucks." Deadpool sniggered.

(AN/ Deadpool stop talking or I'll write you an unhappy ending)

Before Deadpool could talk again, Ms Marvel slammed her fist onto the table and implored "Look you're the only one she'll listen to at the moment, convince her to go back to the Kestrel or to your bunker."

"Ok one; I'm not crossing her, human Alice is scary enough but going against angry pregnant cyborg bunny her is like suicide. And two; I lied, there is no bunker." Deadpool shrugged, reaching under his desk and grabbing a medium sized box, made of pink plastic with 'Stark Industries' written on it.

Ms Marvel pushed passed her irritation and asked "What the heck is that thing?"

"This is a stasis box I stole from Iron Man when I was an Avenger, it's meant to hold chemicals for transport with no chance of degrading." Deadpool explained, opening the lid and putting one of the leftover burritos in, which floated in zero-gravity "I use it so my food won't go gross and mouldy...and this is definitely not foreshadowing of any shape or form."

"Enough!" Ms Marvel grit her teeth "Alice, I'm sorry, I know you're an adult and going through a rough patch with your wife but I can't let you stay here, I'm calling the Champions and Ceartais and we're taking you back to The Kestrel." the inhuman then began to check her pockets for her phone but couldn't find it, she level a peeved look at the smug looking bunny and asked "Where is it?"

"Somewhere safe." Alice sang, licking the last bits of taco sauce off her fingers before unpausing the game.

"Alice, give me my phone." Ms Marvel ordered.

The white bunny's ears twitched as she pushed the controller's buttons with rapid speed and kept her eyes glued to the screen "Ms Marvel, you should take three steps to your left and cover your ears." she replied in a calm manner.

"Huh? Look Alice, just give me my ph-" Ms Marvel began to reply but was cut short by a small black baseball-sized object bursting through the window and hitting her directly in the stomach, sending her to the ground, winded and bruised as the thing that struck her rolled onto the carpet.

Alice saw the object hit the inhuman and whispered " _Praesidium."_

The object that had hit Ms. Marvel was a flashbang grenade, it exploded with a dozen or so bright flashes and a series of blinding white lights that filled the room with smoke, terrifying and disorientating Ms Marvel. In the middle of the explosion a figure burst through the window, rolling onto the floor with grace before producing a desert eagle pistol and unloading an entire magazine at Alice all why screaming the word " _Salope! Salope! Salope!"_ over and over.

The smoke faded and Ronin right hand was rattling, the gun was empty and she expected to see Alice riddled with bullets but then something unexpected; Alice was looking at her mutant counterpart with disappointment, the doe was unscathed and surrounded by a golden transparent dome of energy. Before Ronin could react, the gun in her hand became super hot and she dropped it as it beagn to burn through her glove, the gun turned to molten metal which burnt through the carpet and the floorboards below it. Deadpool tackled her from behind and restrained her arms, while the mutant was struggling she saw the Mage's figure slowly fade into view, looking down at Ronin with disgust before speaking into his comm link "Target secure. Roar, Bullet, sit rep."

" **I've found Ronin's bike and smashed it into a million little pieces, she's got no other getaway vehicle."** Roar's voice came over the radio.

" **And I have a clear shot on her if she tries to flee the office. Is Alice and Ms Marvel, ok?"** Bullet added

"I'm fine, but Ms Marvel may have a big bruise on her stomach." Alice replied, getting off the sofa with her katana in hand.

"T-this was a trap...oh man, I'm think I'm going to throw up." Ms Marvel coughed and spluttered, feeling groggy from the blow to her abdomen.

"You whore! I'll kill you!" Ronin screamed with rage at Alice, thrashing around and trying to free herself from Deadpool's grasp.

"Easy there, Frenchy." Deadpool warned, putting more strength into keeping the assassin down.

"Sayame would be so disappointed in you." Alice said with disdain "My master taught me never to strike in anger, that emotions cloud judgement and to always assume things were never as they seem. You were angry, you sought revenge upon Luna by killing me and my kits and charged in without a second thought. Just like at the safehouse, just as I predicted."

"You dishonour Sayame! She trained you to be a weapon not a heroine!" Ronin spat, still trying to free herself.

"But Sayame...no, my mother loved me, just as your Sayame loved you. She never wanted this life for us, she only trained us so we could save ourselves. But you never did." Alice replied, for a moment she felt pity but it quickly vanished.

"So this whole time, it was a set up!?" Ms Marvel exclaimed, hoping she wouldn't hurl.

"I began to formulate the plan last night, as soon as I kicked Luna out of our cabin. I would play the part of the scorned and irrational pregnant doe out in broad daylight, all the while Mage would be invisible beside me to ensure I was unharmed." Alice explained, looking up at the queasy looking inhuman.

"You were there the entire time?" Ms Marvel gawped at Mage.

"Yeah, you were an unexpected twist though but it really sold the whole thing; the well meaning heroine trying to bring the vulnerable bunny back to somewhere safe." Mage answered, reaching into his pocket and pulling out Ms Marvel's phone he had pickpocketed earlier, handing it back to her. "We had Roar and Bullet tracking Ronin all the time, keeping up informed of her movements, Bullet had a sleeper sniper rifle ready in case this nut job tried to hit the office with a rocket launcher or something and Roar was there in case she brought back up."

"Oh that's a twist, very twisty." Deadpool chuckled, still holding down the struggling Ronin.

"So...so where's the rest of Ceartais?" Ms Marvel wheezed.

"On the Kestrel, oblivious to what we were up to." Alice replied with a touch of bitterness "Luna kept me in the dark and put herself at risk. I've kept her in the dark, didn't put myself at risk and worked with a team to capture my mark, like it should be done."

"So this is partly about capturing Ronin and the other is getting your own back?" Ms Marvel asked, looking at the bunny with disbelief.

"Pretty much, but Luna's far from forgiven yet." Alice stated.

Ronin saw that Alice's muscles were less tense now, she was not ready for an attack. The assassin forced her head back and slammed into Deadpool's chin, he loosened his grip slightly and Ronin's right hand shot to her belt wanting to grab a shuriken but before she could even touch one of them the swordswoman felt an unimaginable pain in her arm and her vision became blurred with red. It had happened in a flash, Alice had predicted her counterpart's intentions and in a one swift action had unsheathed her katana and sliced through Ronin's arm at the elbow, severing it entirely.

Ronin screamed in sheer agony as blood poured from the sever point, seeing her lifeless right forearm flop onto the ground. Mage waved his hand and bound Ronin by blue astral chains before crouching down and using magic flames to cauterise the wound before she bled out, Deadpool quickly grabbed the severed arm and waved it at the wailing Ronin "Bye bye, Ronin." he teased before running over to the staisis box, taking out the burrito and putting the arm in "One preserved arm!"

Ms Marvel witnessed the bloody scene and could no longer keep her nausea at bay, her legs buckled and threw up her breakfast, Alice ignored the vomiting teen and spoke into her comm link "Bullet, put this bitch to sleep." A sleeper gel bullet then came zipping through the window and hit the white haired killer in the head, putting her into an instant slumber.

"D-did you plan to chop her arm off?" Ms Marvel panted, beyond grossed out.

"No, but it seems fitting." Alice replied in a cold manner, holding up her cybernetic arm "I chopped off my arm once to save my life and I just did it again."

"Well it was a pleasure doing business with you Alice." Deadpool chirped, getting out his phone and selecting SHIELD's number "That fifty million bounty is as good as ours."

"Remember my half goes to the families of the victims killed at the SHIELD building." Alice reminded, cleaning the blood off her blade with a hanky.

Ms Marvel's phone buzzed and the dazed teen read the text before relaying "Luna's wondering where you are?"

"Tell her I've got the second rift key." Alice said coldly, sheathing her sword.

000

"And then Quill was all like 'Dance battle bro', distracting that shithead Ronan while me and Drax got the weapon ready." Rocket laughed as he told the story, mimicking his friend's dance moves. The raccoon was stood on top of a table in the cafeteria telling the crowd of mammals that had gathered the tale of his first adventure with The Guardians of the Galaxy. All of them had been enraptured and entertained by the space-fairing adventurer's tale.

"Oh come on, he didn't challenge the bad guy to a dance battle." Esso sniggered, hardly believing the tale as Rocket continued to dance.

"He totally did and Ronan was just stood there looking at this jackass saying 'What are you doing?'" Rocket continued, impersonating Ronan's deep voice.

"Ok so how did you get the stone out of his hammer?" Regina asked, the mare was cuddled up next to the stag Harper.

"Well I had the power cables ready while Drax held the..." Rocket started to explain but was interrupted by a claxon that began to echo through the cafeteria area.

"The hatch? Have we got a new arrival?" Vanessa murmured, rising from her seat as the large roof hatch began to open, some of the mammals scurried back into the cells but Rocket, Esso and her kinda-friends stayed rooted to the spot. But no prisoner was dropped down, instead a burly figure garbed in silver and green floated down, flanked by four Doombots.

"Is that..." Harper uttered, unable to complete his question due to his mouth going dry with fear.

"Doctor Doom." Rocket said in a serious manner, expecting the villain to grab him and drag him somewhere for interrogation.

Doom stomped towards the mammals, Rocket was bracing himself to be grabbed but instead the tyrant marched by him and loomed over the sitting Regina "You will accompany Doom, now." his demanded.

"She's not going anywhere with you, you bastard!" Harper shouted despite his terror, stepping between the armoured man and the trembling mare.

Doom looked at Harper briefly before giving him a backhanded slap, knocking him out and crashing him onto the table where Esso and Vanessa began tending to him while the Doombots aimed their weapons at the mammals in case they made any retaliation. Doom returned his focus to Regina and spoke "That deer cares deeply for you, you probably reciprocate those feelings. If you don't want to see those antlers ripped from his skull, you best heed Doom's command."

Regina was too scared to speak, she just nodded and stood up, Vanessa and Esso looked ready to jump on Doom and save the horse but she just shook her head warning them to stand down. Two Doombots grabbed Regina and carried her as they flew out of the hatch with Doom leading the pack. As soon the hatch closed Rocket began to smile menacingly "Ok it's time to take this scrap heap of a ship!"

"Do you think he's heading through the rift in the throne room?" Vanessa fretted, checking Harper's pulse, relived to feel it was strong.

"I trashed his lab in the last riot, his new lab has to be through the rift." Esso answered, already running for the trash chute.

Rocket scrambled for his makeshift radio as he followed Esso "Zoe, Doom's leaving the ship, as soon as he leaves give us the signal and we'll take the bridge!"

" **On it, I'm still shadowing Doom, he's got the horse girl with him."** Zoe's whispering voice came over the line.

Rocket couldn't help but smile, yes this was dangerous, yes he and other mammals could die but it didn't matter he was finally going to get a shot at Tazerface, he was finally going to get justice for Lylla.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! What did you think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next Time on TBM; Ceartais are at odds with one another, Rocket and Esso get to work, Jack Savage gets the shock of his life and Robyn sees something through a mirror that terrifies her! Please review and c ya soon!)


	44. Falling Star

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Thank you so much for all the amazing reviews, replies, reblogs, comments, faves and follows. Ok we're on the final stretch of the Take A Stand sage, I'll hope you enjoy the upcoming chapters. So without further ado, let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 43- The Falling Star**

The Kestrel's lab had become the meeting place for both The Champions and Team Ceartais. It was a place to formulate plans of action, develop tech to help with mission or somewhere where they could just hang out and chat but right now the hele-frigate's lab felt like a battlefield before the general yelled 'Charge'.

As soon as Ms Marvel had texted Luna about what had happened there had been a flurry of activity and swear words on The Kestrel. Dragoness was personally escorting Ronin from Deadpool's office to the medical wing at the Raft high security prison with an escort of fifty SHIELD agents to make sure the now one-handed killer got there securely. Kodi had used a sling ring portal to get everyone from the Soho office back to the Kestrel, with Kion holding onto the stasis box with Ronin's preserved severed forearm floating within. Olivia requested everyone's presence in the lab, even though she had said this with a low volume there was no hiding the anger she was feeling.

The Champions knew that they would be mediators for the ensuing argument with Clara, Arthur and Jason joining them in this position, all sharing the same sense of awkwardness and dread as they looked at the divided Zootopian heroes. Arthur had purposely brought Jason into the lab in the hope that the mammals would act with some restraint, knowing the heroes wouldn't let things get too heated in front of the child.

Before Olivia could open her mouth, Luna took a few steps towards Alice and nervously spoke "I know I'm your least favourite mammal at the moment and that you're still mad with me, but I need to know; are you ok? You weren't hurt were you?"

Alice still had her sheathed katana in her right paw, she used it to beckon Luna to crouch down which the vixen did without hesitation, Alice then stroked the fur of her wife's cheek before replying with an eerie stillness "I am unharmed, the babies are fine too...I'm sorry for calling them 'My children' last night, that was too far but I'm not going to apologise for what I've done and you're far from being forgiven yet."

"I get that." Luna accepted, taking comfort from the paw on her cheek. She felt angry at Alice but at the same time she wasn't, was it due to relief or had she accepted this as punishment?

"Well I don't get it." Robyn simmered, looking at Kion, Kodi and Alice but her focus rested on Hannah "What the heck were you guys playing at?"

"Working together as a team to bring down Ronin, like it should be." Alice answered, looking up at her sister in law, surprised by how restrained the hybrid was being.

"So that's what this whole thing was? A massive middle finger to Luna?" Robyn accused.

"Partly." Kion confirmed, a lot more at ease than the night previous but his expression was still tipping into scorn "But the main objective was getting Ronin's handprint and DNA."

"But I never intended to slice off Ronin's arm, things just worked out that way." Alice made sure to add, motioning to the stasis box.

Ms Marvel shuddered before mumbling "I'm going to be seeing that moment in my head for weeks."

"I can get wanting to keep Lu out of the loop but what possessed you to put Alice in harm's way and to keep me, Olivia, Clara, Arthur and The Champions out of the loop?" Robyn questioned.

"Alice was never in any danger, she had Kodi's 'Prasedium' belt buckle in her pocket plus he was invisible beside her the entire time." Hannah explained, taking off her domino mask and beginning to unstrap the holsters holding her guns "Kion was there in case Ronin brought in a strike team and I was providing sniper cover."

Kodi then carefully said to Clara "And no offence but you're not an official member of the team and you're still getting used to your powers."

"That's, uh, cool. No problem." Clara awkwardly replied, not wanting to be part of the argument.

"And Arthur is Jason's temporary guardian, we didn't want to put him at risk." Kion nodded at the eurasian wolf.

"Thanks, I guess." Arthur shrugged, the wolf was dressed in his new armoured jacket and had Excalibur fixed onto his back.

"Well what about us?" Riri asked, the engineer looked the most peeved of The Champions "We've been through so much together and now all of a sudden you shut us out?"

"There was no time to clue you in, by the time the plan was devised it was already 4am and you were all asleep either in your bunker or homes, we had to act fast. Criminals like Ronin act recklessly and more impulsive in the first twenty four hours of a significant event. I knew she would seek revenge against Luna and I was the means to that end." Alice listed pragmatically "It was never my intention to hurt you through exclusion, it was merely due to time constraints."

"What about US?" Robyn pressed, spreading her arms to motion to herself, Luna and Olivia who was stood on the out-stretched palms of Snowguard.

"It was clear you sided with Luna last night, you would've agreed with her and never let Alice be part of the plan." Kodi answered with a sigh, he felt bad about the decision but it was the right one in his opinion.

"What a crock of sh-poop!" Robyn began to curse back but then spotted Jason and reworded.

"So let me get this straight. You went behind your team leader's and the second in command plus Robyn because we didn't get mad at Luna last night?" Olivia asked, despite her size her tone and stance intimidated everyone else in the lab.

"We had no time for a debate, Alice told us the plan and we went for it. We couldn't trust your judgement on this." Kion replied truthfully.

Olivia took a brief inhale before looking at Arthur and advising "Cover that wee lad's ears."

Arthur covered Jason's ears with his paws to which the caracal did not protest, Olivia then looked at the guilty party and yelled "You two-faced, hypocritical, conniving shower of shites! For fuck's sake, you undermine me just to get back at Luna then act high and bloody mighty but you're really a bunch of childish pricks!" The mouse looked like she was going to jump from Snowguard's hand and onto Hannah's face, so the magic user held her fingers around the raging rodent.

"Wind your neck in Olivia, we did what was needed." Hannah replied sternly.

"But why would you keep this from me!?" Robyn shouted at her wife.

"Princess, don't make this harder than it already is. What's done is done, let's just carry on with the mission." Hannah implored, hating the fact that she had deceived her beloved.

"No, no way!" Olivia cut in before Robyn could reply "We are not letting this slide! You're a pack of hypocrites, harping on about Luna putting herself in danger when you served up preggo-bunno here on a silver bloody platter!"

"She was never in any danger, we've told you this." Kodi reminded.

"Well that's bollocks, because what about that?" Olivia snapped, pointing at the stasis box on the desk with Ronin's severed arm floating within "Ms Marvel, how did that happen?"

Ms Marvel didn't expect to be called upon, she squirmed a little before replying honestly "When Deadpool had Ronin pinned, she broke free and reached for one of her shuriken that's when Alice cut off her arm."

"So what you're saying is that Alice could've still been hurt, even after Ronin was restrained?" Luna asked, sounding shocked.

"...Yeah." Ms Marvel reluctantly answered.

"So you WERE in danger!" Robyn shouted at Alice.

"Oh please, I saw the move coming a mile off, I took her arm before she could act." Alice played down.

"That's not the point, you were still at risk. You threw Lu out of your room last night for putting herself in the firing line and then you do the same damn thing today." Robyn barbed before looking at her sullen looking sister "Why aren't you more mad about this?"

"I, uh, well..." Luna began but she had no answer.

"Because she knows how she did things was wrong and how I did things was right." Alice responded.

"That's a load of crap, you should've come to me." Olivia growled at the doe "...if we were back home I'd put you all on suspension."

Alice then infuriated the mouse even more by shrugging and commenting "Honestly? Totally worth it."

"Why you-" Olivia began to shout but Alice held up her paw to silence her.

"Olivia I respect you, I love you as a friend but I couldn't risk you going against me on this. I need to get mine and Luna's kits home safely." Alice stated "Besides I'm already on maternity leave, you won't see me in my Yurei outfit for at least a year now, if you want to add a suspension on top of that go on ahead but it was worth it to get the rift key."

"We came to this dimension to rescue the kidnapped mammals and I want to complete my mission." Kodi then added, stepping forward "We've rescued three so far but we need to get everyone back to Zootopia, but if you want to suspend me, fine by me, I know I did the right thing."

"Oh to hell with all of you!" Olivia bellowed "You went behind our backs, put Alice in danger and she nearly got a shuriken stabbed into her. You're the fuck ups here, not us...christ, do you guys even know what a team is? Maybe you don't belong on it."

Arthur then lifted his paws off Jason's ears and quickly stepped between the split team before saying "You're more than a team, you're a family, hell four of you are actually related. You can't let one mistake ruin everything."

"Look Knight, I know you mean well but you know nothing about us or what we've been through." Robyn said, taking steady breaths to remain calm.

"You're right I don't know what you've been through but I know you're closer than friends, you're a family and that's a lot more than I ever had growing up. Now stop this talk about kicking mammals off the team and focus on the mission." Arthur implored "Families fight but they forgive each other."

"You've clearly never heard of divorce." Kion groaned "And if we're talking about consequences why the hell aren't Luna and Wasp being made to answer for what they did?"

Brawn put a hand on Kion's shoulder, hoping to calm the lion down, he then answered "We talked about it and voted, Wasp is staying on the team but she's no longer a senior member of the team, she won't have any voting privileges for the next six months."

"And I will be monitoring her for any untoward activity." Viv added, looking rather sad about this.

"It's ok, I've accepted this. I have to pay for what I did." Wasp spoke, her eyes bloodshot from crying earlier, Spiderman couldn't bear to see his friend look so glum and opened his arms, the heroine immediately accepting the hug.

"Ok but what about Luna?" Hannah asked Olivia "Were you even going to punish her?"

"I...I hadn't thought about it yet." Olivia tried to dodge.

"And yet you're ready to kick us off the team?" Hannah accused.

Luna could see the argument descending into toxic territory so she made an offer "I'm the reason this all came about, I wanted revenge and it cost us capturing Ronin, betraying your trust and nearly getting myself killed. My actions forced Alice's hand and she did what she thought was right, I'm the catalyst for this entire situation. If it will save the team, I'll resign."

" _Mon Amour."_ Alice gasped, not expecting Luna's words.

"Lu, you can't quit, you're one of the founding members, you're second in command." Robyn rambled, pulling at her ears in a fretful manner.

"It isn't like I haven't quit before and besides maybe this is for the best." Luna said, feeling a lump grow in her throat and her eyes beginning to sting with tears.

"No." Kion said with force.

"Huh?" Luna sounded, everyone was looking at the lion.

"No, I don't accept your resignation. You don't deserve the option to quit." Kion expanded "You said you wanted to be a better version of Marian, well then prove it. Or are you going to quit right after proving you're just like her without fixing your mistakes?"

"Weren't you against her five seconds ago?" Robyn scoffed.

"I still am. It's going to take me a long time to forgive her but she owes us, she needs to make amends for what she's done." Kion explained "Besides she loves being a heroine too much, if she quit the team, she'd just go solo without the team acting as her conscience."

"...He's right, she'd never lay down her bow." Alice sighed, knowing that she could never put down her sword in the same way.

"But there has be some consequence for what she's done." Hannah said, crossing her arms.

"And what you lot did to." Olivia reminded bitterly.

Luna thought for a moment and looked at her teammates, knowing they were right. Her amber eyes then settled on Kodi before saying "You've grown so much since that night you were brought to the bunker, everyone else had a super powered advantage but not you and despite all that you became a fearless hero. You're no longer that player teenage wolf, you've become a responsible adult, you sacrificed a year of your life to learn magic just so you could save Clara. You always do the right thing and put the needs of the team above your own. I am proud of you, Kodi."

Kodi was caught off guard by the words and replied "Umm ok? Why are you saying this?"

"I want you to take my place as second in command." Luna offered "I don't deserve it, but you do."

"I..." Kodi gawped.

"Whoa, hold the phone. They still need to be punished for what they did." Olivia butted in.

"If your pride is worth so much to you Olivia, then fire me." Kion said bluntly.

"What?!" Olivia exclaimed "Look I love you guys but you betrayed my trust, this is not about pride."

"Well you see there's a difference between me and the others, they want to be superheroes, I don't." Kion replied stoically.

"Big guy, don't do this." Kodi implored.

"It's a win-win this way, you take Luna's spot, Olivia gets her justice and I get my ticket off the team." Kion said, being strangely pragmatic.

"I don't want you to quit Kion! I was angry, I didn't mean it when I said you guys didn't belong on the team." Olivia said, gone from furious to panicked in a few seconds.

"Look I'm going to be honest, I've been thinking about this for a while, I was going to leave it a year until Alice was back from maternity leave but this whole situation has brought things to a head. As soon as this mission is over I'm off the team." Kion reasoned.

"Please don't quit the team because of what I did, Zootopia needs you." Luna begged.

"It's too late Luna, my mind's made up. I can't work with someone I don't trust." Kion stated flatly, glaring at the vixen.

Hannah then mumbled in a woeful manner "I don't like it, but maybe's it for the best."

"Hannah." Robyn alerted, the striped hybrid's attention was now on her wife as she asked "I can get you keeping this from Lu and Olivia. But why me?"

"Princess, look I know how it seems but I was angry at Luna and Alice's plan was the right thing to do." Hannah made an excuse, walking over and taking hold of Robyn's paws "I want us to go home, to be with Aaron, for us to be a family."

"We're about to be mothers and you couldn't trust me? How do you think that makes me feel?" Robyn asked, her words tinged with sadness.

"I never meant to hurt you, I love you." Hannah reacted, feeling like the world's worst wife.

"I love you too." Robyn responded, before taking her paws away from Hannah "But love and trust are two separate things, and you didn't trust me." the ginger hybrid then turned around and started to walk out the lab.

"Robyn?" Hannah called after, taking a few steps in chase.

"Don't. I can't be around you right now." Robyn warned with a trembling voice, she then stormed out of the lab.

Hannah went to go after her but was stopped by Luna who cautioned "Leave her be, let her blow off some steam then talk to her."

Robyn had run through the corridors of The Kestrel, weaving between the human crew members and heading to her cabin, she slammed the door to her room and marched over to the sink to splash some water on her face to calm herself down. This situation was so messed up; Alice nearly got killed, Kion was quitting, Luna was giving up her rank but the fact that Hannah had kept her in the dark hurt the most. She was tired of secrets, she was tired of this dimension, she just wanted to go home to Zootopia. Robyn washed her face and screamed her frustrations into the washcloth and tried to think of something that would calm her down, her mind drifted to Aaron but right now she desired comfort, she needed her Dad. Judy was a hugger and would always give both her children hugs for any occasion but Robyn always favoured a hug from Nick when she was stressed out. She set the face cloth down and wasn't surprised to see her 'Mirror' powers had kicked in. In the mirror above the sink she saw Nick Wilde sat at his desk in city hall, typing away at his laptop. "Hey Dad, I really miss you." She said, knowing her voice wouldn't reach him.

But suddenly Nick looked up with alarm, out the window of the Mayor's office "What the?" Robyn mumbled.

Then all of a sudden a purple cloud appeared in the sky above Zootopia, Robyn couldn't hear anything through the mirror but the scene was terrifying, Nick leapt out of his chair and rushed to the window only to see something come through the purple cloud, it was huge and metallic and part of it was on fire but what alarmed Robyn the most was that it was crashing down towards the city. Robyn blinked and the vision was gone "No, no come back. Come on powers, show me Dad! Show me Zootopia!" she yelled but it was in vain. She turned around and charged out of the room towards the lab, the angst and arguments would have to wait. Right now Team Ceartais needed to get back to Zootopia.

000

Tazerface was beyond bored, his eyes were heavy as he looked out the window at the purple void the Cauldron was floating through. The alien slob had been sat in the pilot's seat for hours, making sure that the prison ship was running at peak performance, he had no idea why he needed to do this, the ship's computer did most of the work but after the prison riot and Doctor Doom's furious borderline murderous mood since his lab was destroyed made Tazerface inclined to follow every order the tyrant gave him.

However his mood rapidly changed when he looked at the monitor showing security camera feeds from across the spacecraft, the feed the criminal was most interested in was showing Doom's throne room, where Doom himself had opened up the hidden wall panel to reveal the rift to his new lab in Zootopia and he was dragging a horse with him through the dimensional rift. Tazerface's expression became smug, he knew the time warp between the dimension was great, so a few minutes in Zootopia could be hours aboard The Cauldron. He knew he could catch at least two hours shut eye before Doom would get back, but he didn't want to risk sleeping anymore, he leaned forward towards the touch screen monitor next to the pilot's chair and began setting an alarm to go off in two hours, but as he leaned closer to the screen he saw his reflection and someone else's "Wha?" he grunted.

Before the outlaw could make out the figure in the reflection her felt a shock of pain across his left eye, he felt a set of claws tears across the flesh and the soft jelly of his eyeball bursting it "AARGH!" Tazerface screamed in pain. He went to strike at the figure who had wounded him but was halted by the feel of cold metal against his temple, he forced himself not to react to his pain and turned his head slightly to see who had a gun pointed at his head, only to see it was his own pistol and that Rocket Raccoon was pressing against his skull.

"Hey shit head." Rocket grinned menacingly, pressing the pistol he swiped from Tazerface's holster harder into his head.

Tazerface hated himself for simultaneously feeling liking he was going to throw up or defecate himself with fear but despite his self loathing he let out a nervous fart and whispered "You said you would bring me in alive."

"Oh I will, I will enjoy watching you rot for years before the Nova corps hangs your old ass from a freakin' noose." Rocket hissed, savouring his nemesis' terror. "But first, you're going to get these people, mammals, whatever they call themselves back home to Zootropolis."

"Zootopia!" Esso corrected, the lynx at the ship's computer console trying to find the security overrides.

"Zootopia, whatever." Rocket huffed "Now I know you know the code to stop these bracelets, so give the kitty cat the passcode before I use your nose as target practice."

"Fantastic!" Tazerface spoke loudly without hesitation.

"Fantastic?" Esso asked from the monitor, taking a questionable look at the alien.

"After the Fantastic Four! Doom's greatest foes!" Tazerface desperately explained.

"Fantastic four? Seriously? Ok." Esso griped before typing the password in, as soon as she hit the return key the Hornet prison bracelet fell off her and Rocket's wrists.

"Holy shit, you really are a coward." Rocket chuckled, still keeping the requisitioned gun to Tazerface's head "Now, get us to Zootropolis or Zootopia or whatever they call it!"

"You think I know how to operate the rift controls?" Tazerface half laughed "Only saved destinations on the computer can help you."

"Hey Cat! Can you-" Rocket started to ask.

"Yes Rocket I have basic IT skills," Esso snarled while typing "and there we go, Savannah Central, just got to punch in the command."

Rocket took the makeshift radio from his belt and spoke into it "Hey Bat, you got Nightcrawler ready?"

" **Kurt is ready for what is about to occur, but please remember; he's still a person, this will hurt him."** Zoe relayed, the flying fox's voice sounding torn.

"Tell the ol' blue dude I owe him a beer," Rocket brushed off "Esso, Zoe, Hit it!"

"Ok the computer has taken in the commands...and the Doombots are on their way." Esso began her words smiling then ended grimacing.

The prison ship began to shake and shudder as it jumped through the multiverse but Rocket kept his composure "How many 'Bots are comin'?" his snapped.

"Five headed to the bridge." Esso relayed, before clearing her throat, prepared to use her scream powers.

"Don't give those buckets of bolts an inch or th-" Rocket started to encourage but was stopped by a swift elbow to the face, he dropped one of his pistols which was grabbed by the perpetrator Tazerface which the panicked murderer began recklessly firing all across The Cauldron's bridge, Rocket weaved and leapt from the line of fire but the resulting shots hit numerous consoles, destroying most of them and setting off alarms before Esso screamed in Tazerface's direction, bursting both ear drums and sending him crashing to the floor in unconsciousness.

Esso felt the sensation of victory for only a second before the ship juddered with interdimensional turbulence and the ship's AI announced over the blaring alarms "Lower three decks on fire."

"Uh...Rocket what do we do?" Esso asked, her hope fading, looking at the bridge door and feeling nauseas.

Rocket's hope was evaporating to, he knew Doombots were heading to kill him but he still managed to smile "Fucked if I know."

000

Regina wasn't resisting, she was too scared. The firm grip of Doctor Doom's armoured hand on the mare's shoulder was a constant reminder that she was a prisoner and at any moment her captor could lash out. The horse was shocked when she saw the purple cloud rift in the throne room but her fear kept her from talking or trying to struggle free as Doom lead her through the rift, in the blink of an eye Doom and Regina were stood in what looked to be a huge metal bowl with wires coming from it leading to computers.

"Welcome home, Miss Lowell." Doom finally said, letting go of Regina's shoulder and stepping out of the bowl and away from the rift.

"What?" Regina replied, her mouth dry and voice shaky.

"You're back in Zootopia." Doom answered, beckoning the mare to follow him out of the bowl which she hastily did.

"This...this is Zootopia?" Regina asked with the smallest hint of hope in her voice, following Doom as he walked to a simple wooden door and opened it up to what looked like a normal apartment complex hallway.

"Indeed, Doom promised you and your fellow mammals would be returned home." Doom answered, stomping down the hallway with the horse closely behind.

"After you've taken our powers." Regina remembered, the hope now gone and the fear was back.

Doom stopped at another apartment's door and turned back to look at Regina before saying "Yes but after this, Doom will release you."

"Clara told me it was dangerous, that it could kill me." Regina replied, her hooves trembling as Doom opened the door to the other apartment.

"Doom won't lie to you, you could die but you don't have a choice." Doom said with just enough malice to make Regina start sweating, he took hold of Regina's shoulder again and led the mare into the apartment "Beast, your first patient has arrived."

Regina let out a gasp of terror upon looking at the blue furred mutant, she felt her knees buckling but was kept upright by Doctor Doom's grip. Beast's expression was a mix of guilt and sympathy as he said "I'm so sorry, ma'am. I will do my upmost to keep you alive."

Doom forced Regina to sit on one of the chairs in the makeshift lab before removing the mare's hornet prison bracelet with him warning "If you attempt to use your powers, Doom will break your legs and make sure you don't survive the procedure."

"I w-won't." Regina uttered, tears were rolling down her face while she tried to think about Harper, hoping thoughts of the stag would bring her comfort but she couldn't envision him, she was terrified of the situation she found herself in.

"Good horsey." Doom mocked before walking over to Beast and inquiring "Is everything ready?"

"Yes, the gene separator is complete." Beast informed reluctantly.

"Good but remember this Beast, if you try anything Doom will punish the horse for your deeds." Doom reminded "Now prep the test subject for the proce-."

 **BANG!** The pop of rifle fire and the shattering of glass came in quick succession but was followed by the ping of a ricochet, a bullet had hit Doom in the head but had hit his helm, the tyrant didn't even flinch. As Doom turned to face the window with bullet hole in another shot came, hitting him in the chest but caused no damage. He looked across at the other building and could see a group of mammals aiming sniper rifles and other weapons at him. Doom identified the leader of these mammals with ease, it wasn't the anyone with a weapon, Doctor Doom's vision settled on a striped buck rabbit holding a pair of binoculars with a now terrified look on his face "Filthy creatures." Doom simmered before charging at the window and bursting in through it, more shots came as he flew through the air with speed and crashing through the partly open window where his attackers were nested. An aardvark Camelot soldier attempted to shoot at Doom again but the dictator just picked him up and tossed him at his fellow soldiers before marching over to Jack Savage, who was scrambling for his pistol and picking him up by both his ears.

Jack screamed in agony as he was lifted up by his long ears, feeling like they were going to be torn off at any second but he still managed to grab his gun which Doom snatched away before ordering "Tell your men to stand down, rabbit!"

Jack Savage was scared and in pain but he wasn't about to give up "Shoot this tin can!" he bellowed.

Doom then turned to the soldiers and MCB agents in the room and threatened "You ingrates pull the trigger and Doom will pull this rabbit's head off."

Lylla, Aleks, Ray and Kiara all had their weapons drawn, ready to shoot but were held back by the threat and Doom could see they weren't going to shoot. They thought they had the villain in their crosshairs but now Doom was in control.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Jack is literally in Doom's grasp?! The Cauldron is on fire?! Can Ceartais get home in time!? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review, Next time on TBM; Rocket struggles to keep The Cauldron in his control, Esso makes a dangerous choice and Team Ceartias and The Champions race to Zootopia! Please Review and C YA SOON!)


	45. The War at Home

**(** AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. I can't believe we're close to 100k views on this fic like the first 2 in the series, it's all thanks to you wonderful readers and the stellar dev team I work with. Thank you for you reviews, reblogs, comments, faves and follows on this fic. And I have to give a shout out to the Dev Team's very own Vanessa who wrote part of this chapter, so without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 44- The War at Home.**

"Crap, crap, crappity-crap!" Rocket seethed, reading the multiple screens showing the status of the ship, all flashing red warning lights.

"What's wrong? I mean apart from the Doombots coming to rip us apart?" Esso joked nervously over the loud alarms echoing through the entire ship.

"That scrote Tazerface hit the ship's coolant controls, normally it wouldn't be a bad thing but the turd had to hit it while we were making an interdimensional jump, meaning the engine is using its full power with nothing to cool it, it's already caused the bottom three decks' electrics to overheat and catch fire." Rocket explained at very high speed, typing furiously, trying to find a solution.

"What deck are the rest of prisoners on?" Esso asked with worry, her eyes glancing to the screen and seeing the tracking dots of the five Doombots getting closer to the bridge.

"Deck six but if we don't get the engine cooled the entire ship will explode the moment we get to Zootopia. We've got eight minutes and thirty seven seconds until we get out the void but the switch from the interdimensional engine back to a standard one will be the final nail in the coffin, ka-freaking-boom!" Rocket relayed while typing before grinning "Ha! I knew it, these prison ships are all the same!"

"What is it?" Esso asked, getting increasingly more anxious.

"On deck five there's some water tanks for the shower block, there's an emergency release on each tank that can be redirected to the cooling system, it won't be enough to stop the fires already burning but it might be enough to stop the entire Cauldron exploding." Rocket answered, stepping away from the screen and getting his gun ready "I'll need to run for it."

"No, that's stupid, I'll go!" Esso volunteered herself, despite shaking slightly from nerves "You need to pilot this thing once we get to Zootopia."

Rocket hated to admit but the feline was right, he needed to stay on deck, he gave small growl of frustration before saying "Looks like you're stepping up, cat. Just get to the end of the hallway then use the stairs, get to deck five and look for a set of tanks about twelve feet high, once you get there radio me and I'll guide you on what to do the next."

"Ok, but first cover your ears." Esso said before taking a deep breath, the door to the bridge opened and five Doombots poured in. The lynx aimed her deadly scream at the automatons, the force was enough to launch one of their heads off while two others had their armoured chests ripped through and destroy their internal systems.

When Esso's scream faded due to lack of breath, Rocket uncovered his ears and sent a brace of headshots to the remaining Doombots, the stolen plasma pistol's shots melting through their mechanized skulls "A plasma pistol, ooh baby, I've been after one of these for a while." Rocket couldn't help but smile before composing himself and hurrying to the pilot's chair "Get going cat! I've got the bridge."

"Right." Esso replied quickly before sprinting out of the room, by her estimation she had seven minutes to save her life and the lives of everyone on The Cauldron.

" **Rocket, Esso, what the hell's going on?! What's with all the alarms!?"** Zoe snapped over the radio, screams could be heard over the line, most likely from Kurt.

"Tazerface destroyed the cooling system for the engine, I got to release the water tanks or we're all fucked!" Esso panted into the radio as she bolted down the corridor.

" **What-"** Zoe began to yell but was cut off by Rocket's voice on the same frequency.

" **Esso can handle it!"** The bounty hunter assured " **You look after Nightcrawler, make sure he doesn't croak before we get out of the void."**

" **Be quick, Kurt's in agony."** Zoe replied, her voice a muddle of empathy and anger.

"I'm trying!" Esso hollered, reaching the stairs and jumping down two steps at a time, the bridge was on deck seventeen, she needed to get down this staircase with haste. She then heard the familiar clunk of Doombot's footsteps lower down the staircase, she quickly looked through the gap and saw another trio of the killer robots marching up the stairs. Esso didn't even register that she was about to something borderline suicidal, she had already jumped down the middle of the staircase gap when she thought _What the fuck am I doing!?_ During her jump down she sonic screamed at the bots, smashing them into the wall, she carried on falling before grabbing onto a railing a floor below the doombots. Esso hissed in pain, the sudden jolt hurt her arms but nothing was broken, she fought through it and clambered over the railing before continue to barrel down the staircase. She was short of breath and her muscles hurt but when saw the number 5 printed on a wall she let out a "Fuck yeah!" She reached the automatic door for the water storage deck, it opened as she stepped forward and was hit with a wave of muggy heat. "The electrics are already overheating." Esso wheezed, making her way inside and was sweating in an instant.

The lynx found it hard to run in the heat, she could barely handle a jog as she made her way to the central room of the deck, where two dozen water tanks we're spaced out, she walked over to the controls for the closest tank and got out her radio "Rocket, I'm at the tanks, what do I do?" She breathed heavily, feeling dizzy from the increasing temperature.

" **Ok you'll need to open at least four tanks for this to work, if you can do more it'd be better."** Rocket began " **You'll see a blue dial, switch it so it's facing south."**

Esso did as instructed before responding "Ok done, what's next?"

" **You'll see a lever on the side of the tank, pull it down."** Rocket continued.

Esso obeyed and pushed down hard on the lever, it was hard to budge but she managed it, she heard a few clicks inside the tank and then the sound of rushing water "Ok the first tank's empty, I'll get the others done!" Esso promised, despite feeling faint from the heat, she tore off her hoodie and t shirt, only leaving her vest on as she staggered over to the next tank hoping she wouldn't faint before she got the job done.

000

Jack screamed in agony as he was lifted up by his long ears, feeling like they were going to be torn off at any second but he still managed to grab his gun which Doom snatched away before ordering "Tell your men to stand down, rabbit!"

Jack Savage was scared and in pain but he wasn't about to give up "Shoot this tin can!" he bellowed.

Doom then turned to the soldiers and MCB agents in the room and threatened "You ingrates pull the trigger and Doom will pull this rabbit's head off."

Lylla, Aleks, Ray and Kiara all had their weapons drawn, ready to shoot but were held back by the threat and Doom could see they weren't going to shoot. They thought they had the villain in their crosshairs but now Doom was in control.

CRACK! A thunderous crack erupted in the clear blue sky over Zootopia, sending a shockwave that made everyone except Doom stumble slightly. The dictator knew exactly what the cause was and uttered with disbelief "No.", he dropped Jack Savage as the warm afternoon air dropped close to freezing and the sky began to form thick dark clouds with wisps of purple coursing through them "NO!" Doom yelled, leaping out of the window and flying towards the purple cloud.

"Sir!" Aleks gasped, running over to the floored Jack "Are you ok?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine." Jack winced, putting his paws to the roots of his long ears and pulling them back to see some blood, there were small tears but it wouldn't be lasting damage.

Ray Kamino looked out at the Purple Cloud and grimaced "By the looks of it Doom wasn't expecting that cloud to appear, but that means we could have another purple rain incident on our hands. Kiara, radio headquarters and get them to close off the airspace around the city."

"On it." Kiara obeyed, getting out her radio but stopped when she saw something coming out of the cloud "What the-?"

It was The Cauldron, the massive prison ship emerged from the cloud with bottom of the ship visibly smoking and small licks of flames coming from it. "It's The Cauldron!" Ray gritted his fangs, whoever is piloting that thing is trying to keep it in the air but it's on its last legs, that thing is going to crash!"

"Sir, what do we do?" Lylla asked anxiously, knowing her husband's double was somewhere on that ship.

Jack took a second to get over what he was seeing and the craziness of the situation before addressing every agent "Mobilize all agents and first responders, we have a potential disaster on our hands. Me, Mantlo and Rojek will be in a chopper and ready to go into that ship as soon as it hits the ground, there are innocent mammals on there and we'll need to evacuate them."

"You can ride in our chopper, I'll lead a rescue party into the Cauldron." Ray added, already rushing out of the room with his team and Lylla and Aleks following, Jack would follow soon as he gave the others orders.

"Notify the ZPD, city hall, the fire service and hospitals, declare a major incident." Jack continued to instruct, he grabbed a pair of binoculars and looked across at the other building to see a stunned Beast and Regina looking at the cloud with amazement "Four agents go over there and retrieve Dr. McCoy and Regina Lowell." As a flurry of activity from his subordinates whirled around him he looked up at the cloud and whispered "Where are you, Little One? We need you."

000

"Ha ha! Esso you did it!" Rocket cheered as he brought The Cauldron through the rift, there was a lot turbulence and the alarms were still going off but the ship hadn't exploded. He saw the skyline of Savannah Central and chuckled "Kinda' looks like Xandar. Hey cat, this Zootropolis place doesn't look so bad." When no answer came over the radio, he asked again "Esso, do you hear me?" But still no answer.

" **Do you think she's ok?"** Zoe asked over the comms.

"I dunno', maybe coming through the rift messed with her radio." Rocket replied, hoping this was the case and that the lynx wasn't in trouble "How's Nightcrawler?"

" **As soon as we got through the cloud he fainted but he's alive, that's the main thing."** Zoe informed " **Can't believe our plan worked, we're home."**

"That's peachy and all but we still got to land this rust bucket and I've got get Tazerface and Nightcrawler back to my universe." Rocket reminded, before something came into his field of vision, floating above the skyscrapers of the city was an armoured figure garbed in a green cloak "Oh crap." Rocket mumbled, quickly preparing the ship's weapons but before he could fire a single shot at Doom, the tyrant raised one hand and fired a ball of green energy at the ship that struck one of propulsion units causing the ship to shake violently, Rocket responded by sending a volley of missiles at Doctor Doom which sent him hurtling to the streets below.

" **Rocket what the hell just happened?!"** Zoe shouted down the line.

"Doom happened, the ol' buckethead hit the ship with something, I can't keep us in the air. We're going to crash!" Rocket answered as he used all his skills to avoid the buildings and barely made it over the weather control plant wall to Sahara Square, if he had to crash land The Cauldron he'd have to avoid somewhere built up, he saw the beaches of Sahara square and guided the ship as best he could to the shoreline, as the ground got closer and closer he yelled across the ship's PA system "Brace for impact!"

000

It took Esso a few seconds to remember what had happened; she had managed to get the four tanks open before collapsing from the heat. She was awoken briefly by Rocket screaming " **Brace for impact!"** but the resulting crash had sent her flying into a tank and she hit her head, making her unconscious. "Rocket? You OK?" Esso asked, still disoriented from the crash, not realizing she didn't have her makeshift radio in her paw. She didn't get an answer. The feline's ears were still ringing and she had a splitting headache. She tried to look how bad she had hurt herself in what remained of the computer but she could barely see anything in the dim red emergency lights. "Rocket? Are you OK, I think we m-" Esso asked for the raccoon again but stopped as she felt water up to her knees.

This sensation almost immediately sobered her up and she started looking for its source. It didn't take her long to find out that the water was quickly pouring in from one of the cooling tanks. But her next epiphany nearly made her pass out again; One of the tanks had been dislodged in the crash and was blocking her only exit, and it was rapidly filling the small room with water.

"Rocket?! Are you here? I'm stuck on deck 5, I need your help." Esso spoke, trying to maintain her composure but the lack of an answer only solidified her panic.

She trudged around in the now thigh-deep water, trying to find another way out. She soon found out that there was no way out of here. Esso tried using her powers, but she could barely focus enough to activate them. The few panicked shouts she managed to produce crashed uselessly against the cooling tank. She looked around for her makeshift communicator, only to find parts of it floating.

"Rocket?! Zoe?! Please help! I'm trapped!" the lynx tried shouting for help but received no answer.

The water almost reached Esso's upper chest now and in her panicked state, she managed to trip over herself. She was underwater for less than a second, but even that was enough to trigger a flashback. She coughed up the water she had swallowed as the scenery around her seemed to change. She was no longer in the Cauldron. She was in a warehouse in the Rainforest district. The same warehouse she remembered from her nightmares for the last five years. Her panicked gasps became quicker as her eyes switched between showing her the Cauldron and the place she was lured to by the Drowned.

"NO! Please! Rocket! Zoe! Vanessa! Please help me! Anyone! Fuck! Please *gasp* I need *gasp* to get out! Help!" Esso shrieked, but yet again no one was there to answer.

She flailed around in the water, her head sinking and surfacing as her mind could no longer tell reality from fiction. She spun around the control room, no the warehouse as hooded figures surrounded her.

"PLEASE! ANYONE!" Esso cried, knowing that she was all alone. She wondered if that was how she was going to die. After surviving the Drowned initiation five years ago, she was still going to end up drowning. She could appreciate the irony of the situation if she wasn't busy trying to stay afloat.

And then... there was nothing. Esso wasn't in the Cauldron's control room, nor was she in the warehouse. In fact, she had no idea where she was. It was just a void around her. Then she heard the voice.

 _"They won't come..."_ it spoke calmly.

Esso tried looking around for its source but couldn't find anything. It sounded somewhat familiar but in her current state she couldn't place it.

 _"They left you to die..."_ it declared again, this time with clear vitriol.

"Who- what are y-" Esso thought and then it hit her, "Fuli? No, there's no way, you're dead!"

 _"No..."_ it rang again, with the chilling calmness Fuli always had when she spoke, _"I live on through my followers."_

"That's impossible! I know you died, I saw the reports! This isn't real!" Esso screamed in her mind, she couldn't see Fuli, the lynx knew she was hallucinating

 _"Oh, but it is."_ Fuli spoke again. _"I could hear you so clear, screaming for help. They all left you. They left you to die. They are weak! I know how strong you are, Esso."_

"No! No! This can't be happening!" Esso thought aloud to herself.

 _"I can hear you, Esso._ " Fuli taunted _"I can hear your panic. Why are you fighting it? You know what you have to do."_

"What?! To drown? Ain't happening!"

 _"If you're weak like the rest of them you will! Only the strong survive! They all abandoned you! I would never abandon you! I always knew how strong you are! You survived through so much!"_

Esso didn't know what to think or do. She didn't know where she was. Hell, she didn't know if she was dead or alive. All she knew was that she could hear Fuli and that the cheetah didn't want her to die. The lynx needed to get out of here but Fuli's voice was growing louder, and louder, and louder.

 _"They left you for dead!"_

 _"They're weak!"_

 _"They deserve to die!"_

 _"Only the strong survive!"_

 _"You are the Drowned!"_

 _"You are strong right?"_

 _"Do you want to live?"_

 _"DO you want to live?"_

 _"DO YOU WANT TO LIVE?!"_

 _ **"DO YOU WANT TO LIVE!"**_

Esso couldn't take any more. She found herself completely submerged in the control room. Even though she was underwater, she let out the loudest sonic shriek of her life, "I WANT TO LIVE! **"**

The hull of the ship was ripped apart and water burst out onto the beach of the ruined beach Sahara Square, Esso was washed out onto the beach, the sound of police and ambulance sirens stirred her before she began coughing up all the water she had unwilling consumed before gasping for air. She was still in a daze, she saw buildings in the distance and the sound of screams and shouts around her but she didn't know if this was even real.

A duo of MCB agents emerged from a nearby car and ran towards the commotion where they saw a female lynx, drenched in water on her hands and knees, coughing and spluttering.

"Miss are you OK?" one of the agents, a male capybara asked but no noise left his mouth.

"Are you hurt?" the other agent, a female tanuki spoke, but again nothing could be heard.

They soon realized how quiet everything was. Even though they heard sirens and screams before them they couldn't hear anything. And then their ears began ringing so loud they both dropped to the ground, clutching their ears. The capybara saw that the lynx was now walking towards them but the ringing was so loud he could barely see anymore.

Esso stared past the agents at absolutely nothing. The agents were writhing in pain before her and then she barked "WEAK!", causing both of their skulls to implode with a sickening crack. She didn't even register the fact that she had just killed two MCB agents, she just walked aimlessly for about ten meters until falling to the ground with unconsciousness escaping her nightmare.

On the other side of the crashed ship, Rocket was still strapped into his seat, he groaned very loudly as realized the ship had landed on a tilt, the window was smashed open and he could see burning debris on the beach. Rocket reached for his radio and asked gruffly "Hey bat, you alive?"

" **Yeah, barely, I'm going to unhook Kurt from these machines and get him out of here, then we need to get the other prisoners and Esso."** Zoe replied, keeping her composure.

"I'll look for Esso you just worry about Nightcraw-Oh fuck!" Rocket started to reply but then saw that Tazerface was missing, he looked out onto the beach and saw a pair of footprints leading away from the bridge.

" **What is it?"** Zoe asked back quickly.

"Tazerface is gone! I'm going after him!" Rocket answered, he unstrapped himself from his seat, grabbed his plasma pistol and hopped out the broken window onto the sand. The smoke from the burning ship made it hard to see but Rocket hastily followed the boot prints to a large piece of debris that looked like one of the ship's exhausts, he was about to dart around the corner of it and fire off a plasma shot at his bounty but was jumped on from above. Tazerface tackled the much smaller raccoon and wrestled the gun of him before kicking the Guardian in the gut a few times

"You little bastard!" Tazerface cursed at the ring tailed hero, leveling his gun at Rocket's head.

Rocket saw the finger on the trigger, he was too winded to move, this was it. He braced himself for the plasma blast but instead the pop of gunfire rang out and Tazerface's forehead suddenly had a hole in it, he hit the sand a second later leaving Rocket on edge and wondering who had fired the shot.

Through the billowing smoke and sand a mammal came into focus, Rocket struggled to his feet but could only manage to kneel as he squinted his eyes, trying to get a better a look at the person who had saved his life. Then his jaw dropped, he didn't register the carnage around him, the loud sirens of cop cars and fire trucks were not reaching his ears, all he could hear was her footsteps. Lylla Mantlo had her sidearm in her paws, aimed at Rocket but only as a warning, her face stoic as she forced herself not to give into temptation and throw her arms around Rocket.

Rocket was crying, he didn't care how he looked, he couldn't help it. He looked up at Lylla and instantly though _I died. Tazerface shot me, I'm dead and Lylla's come to collect me...I'm ok with this._ The hero then gave a smile of pure joy as he choked on his tears "Hey, Lady."

Lylla froze, he had called her the pet name that 'Her Rocket' used to call her and in an instant the stoic façade crumbled, she lowered her gun with her paws trembling and knees weak. She managed to walk over to him and stroke the fur of his cheek before sniffing through her tears "Hey, Handsome."

Rocket leaned into Lylla's paw and inhaled her scent that was just like her remembered "So this is the afterlife, huh? I pictured more little dudes with pitchforks." he couldn't help but joke.

"Rocket, you're not dead." Lylla half laughed/half cried "I'm...I'm not 'Your' Lylla and you're not 'My' Rocket."

It took Rocket a second to process this and quickly concluded with a whimper "Fucking multiverse."

"You lost 'Me' and I lost 'You'...but..." Lylla cried, hating that reality was getting in the way of her fantasy.

Rocket stood up quickly, cupped Lylla's face and kissed her. The otter was shocked at first but didn't resist, she wanted his lips on hers, she switched gears and became more dominant with the kiss, pulling Rocket close and getting lost in the moment despite the fire and destruction around them. They finally pulled back from one another and Lylla mumbled "...but I don't care."

"Agent Mantlo?" A critical voice asked.

Lylla turned to her left to see Jack Savage and Aleks along with dozens of firefighters and paramedics swarming behind them to the wreckage. Rocket looked over at the silver fox and the striped buck bunny and whispered "You know these bozos?"

Jack got a good look at Rocket and gasped "Rick!?" His paw clutched to his chest, he had seen Rick Mantlo's body in the morgue years previous and been one of the pallbearers at his funeral, yet the raccoon was stood before him.

"Who the hell is Rick?" Rocket asked gruffly, annoyed that his reunion was being interrupted.

000

Robyn wasted no time running back to the lab, only to find everyone still arguing over Kion quitting the team and the rest of the fallout from the last twenty four hours. She had to shout at the top of her lungs to get everyone's attention but as soon as she explained what she had seen in the mirror everyone mobilized. Within thirty minutes Ceartais, The Champions plus Clara, Arthur and Jason were stood in the Latvarian church in Brooklyn, suited and geared up for action. All the crates of equipment that they had brought with them were ready to go through the portal there was only one problem they had to wait for Dragoness to retrieve 'Andi' from Bellevue hospital and to say the wait was tense was an understatement.

Ceartais were scattered around the church and The Champions were left wondering how to mend the bond between the teams. "Ok so this is the most awkward I felt in a long time." Iron Heart commented, fully armoured and ready to go at any second.

"Yeah that whole thing in the lab was horrible." Snowguard sighed.

"And it's partly my fault." Wasp lamented.

"Nadia, stop that." Ms Marvel comforted, taking hold of her friend's hand "You made a mistake, you owned up to it and our team dealt with it. Now we just got to help them."

"But how? I mean the mammals are a mess right now." Brawn said, looking at the Zootopian heroes spread through the church.

"Maybe this is something we can't fix." Spiderman commented.

"Way to be a downer, web head." Ms Marvel grumbled at her second in command.

"I'm serious, Big M. We're superheroes, we can help with natural disasters, we can stop super villains and we rescue people. But we're not therapists. We can't use powers or technology to fix relationships." Spiderman explained his reasoning.

"Miles is correct, emotional wounds are harder to heal than flesh and blood ones. Only Ceartais can help themselves." Viv agreed, her voice full of sympathy.

"Well I don't think it'll be fixed before Dragoness gets here." Iron Heart said "And by what Scarlet saw in the mirror, we need a team to tackle this mess, not heroes on their own."

Near the vestibule Kion and Bullet were stood chatting quietly, the gunslinger was spraying her white spray on her stripes since they were going back to Zootopia while saying "I just don't get why you want to leave."

"When you become a parent, you'll understand." Kion replied, clearly tired of this line of questioning.

"I am a parent." Bullet stated, tucking her white spray can away "I'm Aaron's mother."

"Not yet you're not." Kion said in a matter of fact way.

"Ok so not until Christmas week but he already calls me and Robyn Mom and I love him." Bullet responded, kind of hurt by Kion's words.

"I'm not talking about adoption papers." Kion answered "And I'm not doubting you love Aaron but you and Robyn aren't parents yet. When you watch them grow, when you look after them when their sick, when you second guess every decision you make for the sake of your kid, then you'll get the idea. Right now you're excited about being a parent, just like I was when Mufasa was born but then comes the fear."

"Fear?" Bullet questioned.

"The first time I went on patrol after Jasiri gave birth I was terrified. I've got bulletproof skin and super strength but I was scared I was going to die, I'd never felt that before." Kion confessed, his eyes looking sullen.

Bullet detected Kion's depressed tone and guessed "You still feel that way? Don't you?"

"Every damn time I transform into Roar. Don't get me wrong I do like being a hero but over the years it's become less and less important to me. The only reason I joined Ceartais was to save Kiara but then we had to stop The Drowned, then we had to save Alice from Karasushiro...there was always a crisis or a case the team would be working on and I'd feel guilty for even thinking of leaving." Kion elaborated "I just want a normal life, I want to work in Jasiri's convenience store and I want to be a Dad who doesn't have to worry if he's going to get home alive to his son."

"That's why you were so mad at Luna, because of Jasiri and Mufasa? What am I saying? The reason I was mad with her was because of Aaron." Bullet criticised herself.

"Yes I'm mad at Luna but that doesn't mean I don't love her, yeah I probably should've handled things better but I meant what I said, it'll be a very long time before I trust her again." Kion said, sounding regretful.

"So to punish her, you're quitting?" Bullet asked, scrunching her nose up "No offence but it seems like you're quitting before you can be fired, it's a bit childish."

Kion shrugged and replied "Maybe it is childish, but I don't care anymore. When we get back to Zootopia and save the mammals on The Cauldron that's it, no more Roar. But what about you? How are you going to fix things with you and the squirt?"

Bullet smelled and felt Scarlet's presence across the room and sighed "I have no idea, I knew this would happen if I went along with Alice's plan but I did it anyway."

By a pile of wrecked pews on the other side of the church, Scarlet, Spitfire, Sirius, Mage and Arthur were chatting with an anxious looking Jason stood beside his guardian. "So let's go over the plan again." Spitfire said despite being emotionally fried.

"We step through the portal, I use a sling ring portal to get Jason and Alice to the bunker where they'll be safe." Mage replied, keeping a level head despite the inescapable fact that the team was fractured.

"Then I and all other team members who can fly will go to The Cauldron and see if we can stop it from crashing." Sirius spoke, the she-wolf was in full costume and ready for her mission.

"What's the likelihood of it still being airborne?" Scarlet asked fretfully.

"I'm not sure, the time difference between the dimensions is vast, so what you saw in the mirror could still be happening as we speak." Sirius answered, wishing she could give a more comforting answer.

"Scarlet, your role, state it." Spitfire prompted.

"Me and the others will work with emergency services to help evacuate or rescue people from the possible crash site." Scarlet answered.

"What do we do if the robots attack?" Jason asked meekly.

"Don't worry Jason, you and Alice will be safe in our bunker." Mage assured the caracal.

"And if the Doombots do come, we can take them." Arthur said with rare confidence.

Spitfire was quiet for a moment looking over at Alice and Maiden, who were quietly chatting on the steps of the altar, both of them looked upset and frustrated but they were talking and that was a start. The engineer looked at this and then said to the mammals around her "Look I know things between the team aren't the best right now but we've got to put that to the back of our minds for this mission, those mammals need saving, after that we can save the team. So look out for one another and try to trust each other."

Scarlet subconsciously stroked her wedding ring upon hearing the word 'Trust', she knew if she looked at Bullet right now she'd probably get upset again and that wouldn't help anybody.

Scarlet was brought of her thoughts by the sound of the church doors opening and the stomping boots of SHIELD operatives marching in, all armed to the teeth. "Looks like the guest of honour has arrived." the hybrid grunted.

The group of heroes saw the tips of Dragoness' wings first then as the SHIELD operatives spread out among the church the inhuman came into view with her prisoner in tow. The handcuffed Dr. Luna Wilde did not walk with the swagger or bravado of her other self, the woman obediently walked beside Dragoness and was very aware of all the guns aimed at her. She was wearing a plain grey hoodie and sweatpants, her long red hair was tied up in a ponytail and she still had two black eyes and bandages on her nose from when Maiden broke it the night previous. The heroes stood in amazement at the transformation of this once feared foe."Dr. Wilde these are the heroes I told you about, they need your handprint and a blood sample to get back home." Dragoness spoke gently to the trembling mutant.

"She's saying things, horrible things, I can see her!" Luna rambled, looking down at her feet out of fear.

Maiden knew her human counterpart was hallucinating and how traumatic it could feel, the vixen acted on impulse and walked over to the woman and took hold of her bound hands "It'll get better Luna, I promise, it won't be easy and it'll take a long time but it'll get better." she comforted.

"You...she doesn't like you." Luna reacted, but she still kept hold of the archer's paws.

"Yeah I don't like her either but you can't let her win." Maiden urged "Luna you know who I am, right?"

"Kind of, Agent Nightfall-Rojek explained it to me." Luna answered, her voice shaky.

"I want you to know that I have the same problem you do, I have the same mental illness but you can make it better." Maiden willed, growing tearful "Promise me something, ok? I want you to work with your doctors, take your meds and play your violin, that way you will be still be Luna Wilde."

"I promise." Luna agreed, giving a comforting squeeze Maiden's paws.

"Um, guys I hate to be a douche but we're kinda' against the clock here." Mage spoke up, pointing to the rift controls in the altar.

"Then let's get moving." Ms Marvel rallied, begrudgingly carrying the stasis box with Ronin's arm floating inside.

Dragoness spread her wings slightly and sighed "It's first time going to another dimension, let's see what you heroes make a big fuss about."

"You're coming with us?" Bullet asked, a little shocked.

"My mission is to get those mammals off that ship and stop Doom, once that's done I'm on desk duty for the rest of my career. Time for one last hurrah." Dragoness replied, snapping her fingers and being passed an energy rifle by one of her subordinates.

Scarlet dared to look at Bullet's face and felt a twinge of angst, she beat it down and said sternly "Let's go home."

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Esso killed! The Cauldron Crashed! Where is Doctor Doom!? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review, next time on TBM; Reunions galore! Alice and Olivia call a truce and Zootopia is besieged by darkness. Please review and C YA SOON...)


	46. Come and See

**(** Hey folks I'm back from my unscheduled week off, i was stressed after learning some news regarding a family member's health, anyway i'm back now. Thank you for all the messages of support. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 45- Come and See.**

Mage had made sure to shield everyone from the rift's effects with his prasedium belt before venturing through. Spitfire was the first to step through the rift, she emerged in the apartment turned laboratory and looked around in confusion. As the others stepped through the controlled purple cloud and out of the stabilizing dish, they looked around the darkened apartment with equal puzzlement.

"Is this Zootopia?" Jason asked with hope, clutching onto Arthur's arm.

"This looks like a condo, not a proper lab." Brawn noted, the scientific equipment keeping the rift powered looked out of place in the modern apartment. He went over and flicked on a light switch, illuminating the room.

"We are home, my phone has a signal." Scarlet answered in a relieved voice, looking at her smartphone. The other heroes had finished coming through the rift with cases and trunks of equipment Ceartais had brought with them.

"Ok, Mage, stick to the plan." Spitfire prompted the spellcaster.

"On it." Mage said, focusing his concentration on the bunker and using his sling ring to make a portal which lit up the apartment "Through one portal and into another, Alice, Jason, step on in."

The other heroes were busy pushing the cases through the sling ring portal and into the bunker while Jason fretted at Arthur "Can't you come with me?"

Arthur gave the young feline a reassuring smile and said "It'll be ok, go with Alice. I've got to go and help the others on The Cauldron, soon as we do that, we can get you back to your parents."

Jason still looked anxious but Alice took hold of his paw and guided him to the portal "Come on, Jason. The bunker is nice and safe." Before stepping through the sling ring portal, Alice took one last look at Maiden and said, "Be careful, _mon amour."_

Maiden detected the uneasiness in her wife's voice but she could also tell that she meant the words "I will, love you." she said back, knowing there was still a lot to repair between them.

As soon as Alice and Jason were safely through Mage closed the portal and was already following Spitfire who was marching out of the apartment but as soon, she walked out into the communal corridor she was met with a shout of "Freeze! MCB, put your hands up!"

Spitfire quickly turned to see a female moose and male weasel both dressed in suits and aiming handguns at the mech but their tenseness mellowed when they got a good look at the heroine "Spitfire?" The Moose gawped, lowering her gun.

"Take it easy with the guns, me and Team Ceartais are coming out of the apartment and we have some friends with us. Do not shoot." Spitfire said loudly and clearly, she then looked back into the apartment and warned "Ok guys, come on out and don't make any sudden movements."

The mammals were the first to exit apartment, effectively making a wall between the gun wielding agents and the bizarre humanoids. As soon as they saw The Champions and Dragoness the two MCB agents raised their guns one more "Easy, easy. They're allies." Roar tried to defuse the situation.

"They look like that thing that attacked Savage." The Weasel bared his teeth.

"Wait, what?" Bullet gasped, wondering which one of her parents had been injured and by who.

"Look we're against the clock here, sit rep, now." Scarlet said with force, she was worried for her mother and father in law but she more worried by what she had seen in the mirror.

"I, uh..." The moose struggled for a moment, looking at The Champions with bewilderment before composing herself and saying, "We were scouting an apartment where a creature named McCoy was being held against his will, when his captor brought one of the kidnapped mammals into the apartment Jack Savage ordered us to take out the guy."

"Let me guess, this guy had silver armour and was wearing a green cloak?" Sirius asked, knowing in her gut that the enemy had to be Doctor Doom.

The Moose didn't know who the bizarrely dressed she-wolf was but answered "Yeah, anyway the sniper rounds just bounced off of him. Then he is freaking flew through the window and into the building we were sniping from."

"He grabbed Savage and was holding him hostage but then the cloud appeared and something came through and crashed into Sahara Square." The Weasel continued the explanation.

"Oh god, we're too late, The Cauldron's already crashed." Iron Heart freaked, all the other heroes looked equally horrified.

But before the heroes could scramble for the nearest exit to race over the city to the crash site a timid voice called out "Clara?"

Sirius looked towards the source of the voice, behind the federal agents in a doorway a familiar face was peeking out with tearful eyes "Regina?" Sirius breathed before squealing with excitement "Regina!" Sirius then barged passed the MCB agents and wrapped the mare in a hug.

"Oh my gosh, you're alive! You're here!" Regina happy cried before sniggering "What the hell are you wearing?"

"Oh, it's my hero outfit, watcha' think?" Sirius grinned, doing a twirl.

Then another figure stepped out of the apartment, broad shouldered and blue furred, Beast was happy to see faces from his universe but said "Champions, Ceartais, it's good to see you but we need to get to The Cauldron. We need to save those mammals."

000

Aleks Rojek was trying his best to keep a level head, as Camelot and the emergency services retrieved the injured mammals from the wreckage of The Cauldron, he stopped himself from pushing the Camelot operatives out of the way and looking for his wife himself but he was already on thin ice with Jack Savage. The silver fox knew if he tried anything like that, he would be thrown off the case, he had checked the identities of all the kidnapped mammals recovered so far as they were loaded into ambulances but he still kept an eye on the hole Ray Kamino had blasted in the prison ship's hull to see who was coming out. "Is this one ok to go?" A Camel paramedic asked Aleks, breaking his concentration.

Aleks looked down at the unconscious lynx on the stretcher, she had been found outside the ship, soaked to the bone and not far from two bodies that had yet to be identified by the forensic team. Aleks looked to his tablet and read off "Sabrina 'Esso' Reese, she's one of the kidnapped mammals." the fox then looked at the two suited bodies with burst skulls and then back at the Lynx and then spoke from his gut instinct "Don't put this mammal with the others, keep her in a separate room. We need to ask her some questions."

"Sure thing." The Camel obeyed before loading Esso into the ambulance with the barely injured Vanessa who just had a small cut on her head.

"Look after her, she saved all our lives." A concerned voice said as the ambulance doors were closed.

Aleks nearly dropped his tablet when he heard the voice, a voice he yearned to hear but feared he'd never hear again. Aleks turned around to see the grinning face of his beloved, Zoe had showered in weeks, her fur was matted and greasy, her wings had stiches in them and her uniform was grimy but Aleks was convinced Zoe looked more beautiful now than she did on their wedding day. "Hey Foxy, hope you weren't too much of a sourpuss without me." Zoe smiled, trying to play it cool despite wanting to wrap her wings around Aleks.

Aleks did drop the tablet onto the sand this time, he shot towards Zoe and scooped her up and hugged her tightly burying his face in her neck and crying softly "I was so scared...so scared I'd never see you again."

Zoe was crying herself but managed to tease "Drama queen." Before kissing her husband deeply.

When the kiss ended, Aleks pulled back and chuckled through his tears "You smell awful."

"Zoe." A gruff British voice alerted, the couple looked up to see Ray Kamino staring down at them but Aleks jumped slightly when he saw what was in the white tiger's arm; a knocked out demonic blue creature dressed only in boxer shorts with a pointed tail peeking out of them "What do we do with the jersey devil?"

"For god's sake Ray, his name is Kurt." Zoe huffed "And we can't send him to the hospital with the others, he needs to be somewhere more secure."

"Ok who is that and why does he need to be secured?" Aleks asked, his eyes absorbing every strange detail of the creature.

"Kurt Wagner, he's a hero in his dimension. Doom, the asshole behind the kidnappings, used Kurt's powers to fuel the purple cloud. Once we get him awake, he can get through the rift and use his powers to close it." Zoe answered, looking up at the purple cloud that was still darkening the sky over Savannah central.

"That's only a theory though, right?" A puzzled voice asked from above.

Everyone looked up to see an even crazier sight than the purple cloud or the crashed space ship. Descending from the sky were Spitfire, Mage, Sirius, Iron Heart, Snowguard and Viv

"Ceartais!" Zoe said happily.

"Um, since when could Mage fly?" Aleks asked, his mind being blown by all the new faces.

"Spitfire who are these...things?" Ray struggled to find the right word "And who is the wolf in the swimsuit?"

"Things? Well that's just rude." Snowguard whinged, landing on the ground and making her angel like wings vanish.

"He's a government stooge, they're all rude schmucks." Sirius sassed.

Aleks, Ray and Zoe all recognised the voice of Sirius and gasped "Professor Bloom?"

"Call me Sirius." she winked and posed "And these fine ladies are with are a few of The Champions, they've been helping us in the other dimension."

Spitfire skipped the pleasantries and questioned "Ray, how many casualties?"

"Only two deaths so far, most of the kidnapped mammals are wounded but they'll survive." Ray answered laying Nightcrawler on the sand with The Champions instantly rushing to him and tending to him "That raccoon who took over the ship had the right idea about heading for the ocean, we've got a few buildings damaged and walking wounded mostly. It could've been a lot worse."

"Wait, so...is the mission done? The mammals are safe and rescued." Mage realized.

"Oh, we're far from done!" An angry voice cut in, everyone turned to see Rocket marching towards them with Lylla close beside him. Before anyone could greet him or ask him how he fared since his capture he snapped "Doom is missing and we need to find him!"

"I thought you hit him with a dozen missiles?" Zoe asked the bounty hunter.

"This is Doctor-freaking-Doom we're talking about here! Those missiles would be a love tap to that lunatic." Rocket answered, sounding stressed.

"Doom's loose in Zootopia." Sirius shuddered.

"And he didn't come straight back to The Cauldron." Viv observed.

"He's got something up his sleeve." Iron Heart grimaced.

Spitfire thought about this for a moment then instructed "Ok we need a plan and we need everyone, not just heroes, ZPD, the feds and Camelot. Bella activate 'War Table' protocol."

" **Confirmed, Spitfire. Rerouting heroes and notifying relevant parties."** Bella replied.

"Whoa, Spitfire, you serious about this?" Mage asked, knowing what the War Table meant.

"Yeah, it's time to bring everyone into The Bunker." Spitfire answered, looking up at the purple cloud and fearing the worst.

000

The War Table protocol had been devised by Team Ceartais after narrowly foiling The Drowned's 'Snow Day' attack. The team had prevented the attack by the skin of their teeth and it cost the lives of their mentors; Hood and The Maid. Spitfire had been convinced if they had worked closer with Camelot, The Major Crimes Bureau and the ZPD from the start that more lives could've been saved and they wouldn't have lost the architects of the Ceartais project. So, when it was deemed that Zootopia itself was at risk Spitfire would activate the protocol granting the city's mayor, a police chief, regional MCB director and closest military authority into the bunker so that they could coordinate with Team Ceartais to help save the city. The price of this of course would be the reveal of The Bunker's location to the ZPD and the Major Crimes Bureau

A large table lined with seats were pulled out of storage and set up in the main foyer of The Bunker where Kodi's pickup truck was usually parked. Olivia was still sat in her mech, with the chest plate open, looking at The Champions and Ceartais set up for the meeting from the observation deck but when she heard light footsteps approaching she had a hunch on who it was "The Bunker was supposed to be somewhere nice and quiet where you could lay low and here I am inviting everyone to strategize." Olivia commented, looking down into the foyer to see a very happy Jason talking on a borrowed smartphone, obviously talking to his parents while Arthur looked on with satisfaction.

"I don't mind, there are lot bigger things on our plate than my comfort." Alice said, now standing beside the mech and resting her left paw on her baby bump.

"How are the wee ones?" Olivia couldn't help but ask, peeking from the cockpit.

"They're kicking a lot today, almost like they know something's going on." Alice gave a small smile, running her paw over her bump "So given the circumstances, I have to ask; are we cool?"

"Oh, we're far from cool." Olivia said firmly "Half me wants to jump out of this mech and personally knock your bucked teeth out."

"And the other half?" Alice asked, unfazed by the violent words.

"Wants to kick you off the team." Olivia answered honestly.

"If firing me will make this crisis end then so be it, I'll respect your decision." Alice replied formally.

"Alice...I swear to fuck god if you weren't with kits, I'd kick your arse." Spitfire seethed, she then covered her face with her paws and let out a scream of frustration "This was not how I wanted our arrival home to be like."

"What do you mean?" Alice digged, noticing the distressed look on the mouse's face.

"I was so close, so close to leaving this mech behind. Kodi convinced me, you know? Told me to go and get Blake back." Olivia answered, her voice cracking slightly "I had it all planned out; we rescue mammals, I retire from the mech and just support and fund the team, Luna would be leader and I could rest easy. BUT NO! Luna had to go and do something crazy, again, splinter the team and mess my head."

"That's why you hesitated to punish her? Because you wanted her to succeed you?" Alice asked, surprised to see such vulnerability in her leader's demeanour.

"Yeah, she finally had a handle on her mental health then she goes behind everyone's back and that just fried my brain then less than twelve hours later you do the same goddamn thing with Kion, Kodi and Hannah and now I'm stuck. I'm stuck trying to fix this goddamn mess, trying to organise how to find Doom and I can't retire...I can't retire now, it's all so messed up." Olivia raged, slamming her left fist on the cockpit's controls.

Alice clenched her fists in frustration at herself, she had already been feeling a tinge of guilt for the conflict that was occurring but hearing Olivia's words, she was far from regretting her decision but hating the fact that she was hurting the mouse " _Je suis tellement desole."_ the bunny spoke in reaction.

"I never learned French, but I'm guessing you're saying sorry." Olivia figured, still irked.

" _Oui."_ Alice confirmed with a small voice "But there's no reason you can't step out of that suit after this battle."

"And how do you reckon that?" Olivia sniped, shooting a warring glare at the rabbit.

"Luna's taken a demotion, Kion is retiring, Hannah and Robyn are still game and Kodi's your best bet as leader." Alice listed.

"Kodi?" Olivia scoffed "Don't get me wrong, I love the wolf as a little brother but I can't see him as the leader of Ceartais?"

"Listen I'm not fond of Luna's latest choices but her picking Kodi for promotion was one I agree with, he loves being a hero and he loves this team just as much as you do." Alice tried to sway.

"Let's just drop this. It's like you said; we have bigger things on our plate." Olivia ended the conversation.

"I heard you back in the Latvarian church, that the team is having some issues but you're right about needing to trust each other. So, this crisis needs to be put on hold until we find Doom." Alice sighed.

"A ceasefire sounds nice," Olivia answered before pointing down at the main foyer of the bunker "but trying to tell those two that."

Alice looked to where the mouse was pointing and grumbled " _Kuso."_ Kion and Scarlet were in the middle of a heated shouting match, with Snowguard trying to calm things down between the two of them.

"Ok let's just take a breather, everyone will be here soon so maybe leave this 'Disagreement' for now?" Snowguard phrased diplomatically.

Scarlet ignored Snowguard and carried on with her rant "You treat Lu like crap then put my future nieces and nephews in danger and now you're waltzing off after the mess you've made!"

"Are you really telling me that you're ok with what Luna did?" Kion growled his question.

"Of course, I'm not but I didn't go and help Alice put herself in danger just to get back at her." Scarlet argued, poking her index finger to his stomach.

"Guys, let's dial it back." Snowguard tried to cool down the fiery argument.

"I helped Alice so I could get back to my family, sticking it to Luna was just a bonus!" Kion yelled.

Across the other side of the room the other heroes were watching the argument unfold with a sense of dread "Should I stop this? I mean I'm the reason this all happened." Maiden asked Ms Marvel.

"I'd say you butting in right now would be putting more gasoline on this dumpster fire." Ms Marvel answered honestly.

"Yeah, you're right." Maiden sighed with guilt as the argument grew more bitter and petty.

Snowguard was getting tired of the barbed insults and scorned tones of the 'Friends', she had tried to be civil but that hadn't worked. She invoked her mystic powers and shapeshifted into her giant werewolf form with antlers and physically separated the two arguing mammals "Stop this, now!" She snarled, the two looked stunned that the usually meek Canadian was speaking so harshly to them.

"Look Amka, I get your good intentions but this is between us." Scarlet said in a lot calmer manner than she was talking to Kion in.

"I don't care, it stops now. The cops and everyone else will be here soon and two of Zootopia's heroes are fighting like children." Snowguard countered, she then shoved Kion and said "You stop being an asshole to everyone, Luna messed up, she knows that and she's accepting it but you acting like a jerk isn't helping this already crappy situation." she then shapeshifted down into an arctic hare (or more accurately a jackalope with the added antlers) and lightly punched Scarlet in the arm "And you stop starting a fight every five seconds and stop avoiding your wife, talk to her for goodness' sake!"

"Right, uh...sorry." Scarlet responded, somewhat begrudgingly.

"Sorry." Kion huffed, folding his arms across his chest.

Snowguard morphed back into her human form and insisted "Now shake hands or paws or whatever." The mammals hesitated for a few seconds prompting Snowguard to sternly insist "Shake paws!" the lion and the hybrid then quickly shook paws before walking off in separate directions.

"Damn, if Snowguard ever has kids she's going to be one tough mother." Brawn whispered to the others who were nodding in agreement.

At that moment the sound of the vehicle door opening above the main foyer of The Bunker caught everyone's attention, the mammals from the authorities had arrived "Ok they're here," Mage breathed before turning to The Champions and Dragoness, adding "you guys head into the armoury."

"Wait, I thought we were part of this plan." Spiderman complained.

"You are but we have to explain things slowly to these guys, one bombshell at a time. Only a few of them have seen humanoids, I don't want to give any of them a heart attack." Mage explained his reasoning.

"Hmm, sounds fair." Dragoness concurred.

"Kodi's right." Maiden agreed, motioning to the armoury "Please, just for a few minutes."

Ms Marvel so no problem with this despite Spiderman's words. She lead the way and said, "Come on guys, we can check if they have anything cool."

As the Champions and Dragoness walked out of the foyer, an armoured MCB truck with tinted windows came down the spiral track into the depths of the secure bunker, it slowed down as it got to the ground level and parked just beside the table and chairs. The driver and passenger doors opened and out clambered Skye and Jack Savage, both of them smiling upon seeing their little girl despite the circumstances "I haven't had to drive one of these things since training." Skye chuckled as Bullet came rushing to her parents.

Bullet wrapped her folks in a tight hug "I really missed you guys." she quietly whimpered.

Jack hugged her back and said "We missed you too, little one. But it's only been two days for us."

"Looks like you've been through some stuff but it's ok now, you're home." Skye comforted but then spotted Maiden and couldn't help but saying "Um, Luna, what's with-"

"Just get Mom and Dad out of the back and we'll explain everything." Maiden cut off.

"Right, right." Skye responded in a slightly confused voice, also spotting the unknown figure of Sirius. The white vixen went around to the back of the armoured truck and jumped up to open the back door "Come on out, you lot."

One by one, mammals emerged from the back of the truck; first was Judy, then Nick, then Lylla and Rocket with Ray and Kiara stepping out last, all of them looking around the high-tech bunker with wonder bar Ray who had visited The Bunker six years previous. "Holy crap...so this is the place, this is where my parents ran Ceartais from." Nick mumbled, the red fox looked a little rough, likely from the commotion in the city.

"The old farts ran a tight ship but sometimes it feels like they're still here." Scarlet said, skipping the greeting.

"Robyn!" Judy yipped, bounding over to her daughter and hugging her "Where's your sister?"

"Right here." Maiden spoke up, her parents turned to see her and were instantly baffled by the outfit "Hey Mom, hey Dad."

"Sweetie, your outfit..." Judy started to say but also detected the sadness in her eldest child's amber eyes.

"You kind of look like, well, your nana." Nick said, a little spooked at the similarity "What's with the pink get up?"

"Stuff happened, got a new outfit, new bow and new callsign, it's Maiden now." The archer glossed over, walking over with open arms and hugging her step mother, father and sister in one big embrace.

Rocket ruined the reunion by grousing "Stuff happened? That's an understatement."

"Rocket, handsome. They were having a moment." Lylla warned with a warm voice.

"Can I get in on this family hug?" A sweet yet worried voice asked.

Nick smiled a little more upon hearing the voice of his daughter-in-law Alice "Sure get on in here Frenchy." He said but then he saw the rabbit and his knees almost buckled and without a filter he barked "What the fuck!?"

Alice was descending the metal staircase from the observation deck with Spitfire following, one paw on her baby bump and the other on the bannister " _Odoroki."_ Alice expressed awkwardly.

Judy hadn't moved with such speed since her twenties, the grey doe was a blur as she rushed over to help Alice down the stairs and said at a ridiculously high speed "OhSweetCheeseAndCrackersAlice!You'rePregnantHowAreYouPregnant? YouLookBeautifulHowManyKitsAreYouCarrying?HowFarAreYouGone?"

"Um..." Alice mused before answering, she was guided to the closest chair by her attentive mother in law "It was a false negative test, I've got five kits in here and I'd say I'm about 17 or 18 days gone."

"Oh Alice, I'm so sorry, you went into god's know where while you were pregnant." Judy fussed, caught between joy and the horror what the golden eyed doe had been through.

"You're ok, you're not hurt right?" Nick worried, running over to Alice and running his eyes over the bunny to check for any injuries.

"Oh, she's not hurt, not that she didn't PUT HERSELF IN THE CROSSHAIRS!" Scarlet couldn't help but blast.

"Princess." Bullet tried to appease.

"Don't, you're still in my bad books too." Scarlet hissed with an added snap of her fingers.

"So, what exactly happened?" Skye asked, her eyes darting between the couple.

"Rick filled us in on a few details and Dr. McCoy also gave us some insight." Jack said, wanting to get the crisis back on track.

"The name's Rocket, not Rick." Rocket corrected.

"Sorry just a little hard to wrap my head around." Jack apologised, still freaked out by seeing his 'dead' work mate walking around again.

Mage decided to intervene before the whole conversation got too messy "Ok, um, yes some things have transpired, including me learning real magic."

"Wait magic is real?" Skye asked the wolf she had known from being a scrappy pup.

"Yes, but not the main topic of a problem, listen we had help in the other world. People like Beast and Nightcrawler, you've already heard about those guys but we really need to introduce our friends." Mage began to explain.

"Aaron said something about them, something called 'Hoo-mans'?" Judy tried to decipher what Mage was saying.

"Well they're mammals like us, most of them anyway, one is a synthezoid." Maiden added.

"What's a synthezoid?" Skye asked, arching an eyebrow.

"A very nice AI." Spitfire said, taking a seat at the table.

"You mean he's a robot?" Nick asked, still reeling from the last bit of news/

"I am a she. And please call me a synthezoid." Viv's voice called out from the armoury.

"Wait she's here!? The syntha-thingy?" Judy gasped.

"Yes, they're here. They are called The Champions and we couldn't have done any of this without them." Alice said sincerely "Plus Sirius, Arthur and Dragoness pulled their weight too."

"Arthur? Arthur Knight? He's safe?" Judy asked thrice with hope.

"I am Ma'am." Arthur walked into view, wearing his new armoured jacket and Excalibur on his back, he stood to attention and saluted "Officer Knight, reporting for duty, sorry for my absence as of late."

Judy instinctively saluted her subordinate back before smiling "Good to see you again, Knight,"

"Ok so...let's get the introductions out of the way." Spitfire said, a little nervous "Guys come out of armoury."

Nick, Judy, Skye and Jack didn't say a word as interdimensional travellers walked out into the foyer but their body language spoke volumes. Nick's jaw went slack, Judy ears pricked up and fur stood on end, Skye subconsciously put herself between the strange creatures and Jack, and as for the striped buck well he had to stop himself for reaching for his sidearm.

Spitfire then motioned to each of their allies and introduced them "These are The Champions, this is their leader Ms Marvel, Spiderman, Viv, Brawn, Ironheart, Wasp and Snowguard. The lady with the wings and tail is their universe's version of Zoe Nightfall-Rojek, she's an agent of a government agency known as SHIELD, her codename is Dragoness."

"Hi." Ms Marvel said with a small wave, immediately noticing the facial similarities between Bullet and Skye.

"And these are mine and Robbie's parents; our Mom Judy is the chief of police and our Dad Nick is the mayor." Maiden introduced.

"Uh, hello." Judy greeted, a little disturbed by these creatures' appearances.

Nick on the other hand decided to act like an elected official should, he walked over to Ms Marvel and extended his paw for a shake "Welcome to Zootopia, we really appreciate you wanting to help us out."

"Thank you, mayor," Ms Marvel smiled down at the fox "you have a lovely city, just a shame about the giant spaceship on the beach."

"This is Flight Lieutenant Ray Kamino of the joint US/UK military unit; Camelot. He's also my brother in law." Kion carried on the introductions, Ray didn't have a response he just nodded back at the heroes, making sure to inspect Dragoness and wondering if there were any similarities between the inhuman and his bat friend.

"And these are my parents; Jack and Skye they're federal agents like your FBI." Bullet rounded off.

"Ok everyone knows each other can we please get started now?" Rocket asked in a frustrated manner, sitting down on one of the chairs.

"Let's get started then..." Maiden muttered, knowing this was not going to be easy.

It took a full thirty minutes to explain everything that had transpired, there had been comfort given in some parts and scolding in others but by the time everything was explained everyone was mentally exhausted. "...And you know the rest. This fight isn't over until we find Doom." Spitfire finished the tale.

"He's one person, is he really that dangerous?" Nick asked, sat beside Judy at the war table.

"Believe me Nick, he is." Jack grimaced, his damaged ears were freshly stiched.

"Agent Savage is correct," Viv interjected "Victor Von Doom is arguably our dimension's greatest foe, he is a master of technology and magic. He has defeated many of our world's heroes before but he is not invincible."

"So how do we find him?" Scarlet fretted.

"We've got all available units searching for him." Skye said.

"And I've got Bella tapped into every security camera in the city." Olivia said, she was out of her mech and stood on the table top.

"Well if he tries to leave the city we'll know, government wants the city locked down until the alien tech is gathered up and the threat is neutralized." Ray informed "The US army has already quarantined the city and the air force has shut down the airspace. He can't escape."

"He's not trying to escape. He's got something planned, Doom always has a plan a through z." Rocket worried, he took hold of Lylla's paw who was sat next to him "I just got my lady back and that creep could ruin the happy ending."

"But what could he be planning?" Skye mused.

"Maybe it's something to do with the big old rift in the sky." Sirius pointed out.

"But Doom didn't make that, Ri- I mean Rocket did." Jack replied while correcting himself

"True but he weaponised the first purple cloud six months ago, what's to say he can't do that again? While that dimensional rift is still open Zootopia has a gun to its head." Sirius explained, making a finger gun and putting it to her temple.

"So, we close the rift, can Nightcrawler do that?" Iron Heart asked.

"He's at the infirmary at the main MCB field office in the Meadowlands along with the other kidnapped mammals, he's way too weak at the moment." Ray regretfully informed "Aleks is there with Zoe, she's getting checked over as well."

"Doctor Doom might go after him, some of us should go and protect him." Bullet suggested.

"Someone who isn't you." Skye replied with a touch of coldness

"Mom, what do you mean?" Bullet asked, hearing the negative tone in her voice.

"You and Robyn were meant to protect the rift in the rainforest district, you abandoned your post then in the alternate New York you help put Alice in danger and with all this talk of you attacking a prisoner...I don't think your judgement is the best right now." Skye spoke her mind, making everyone sat at the war table uncomfortable.

"Are you mad with me?" Bullet asked, hardly believing her mom was telling her off at a time like this.

"No, I'm disappointed." Skye answered, there was a collective wince around the table, everyone knew that mother being angry with their child was one thing but being disappointed was far worse.

Nick had his own feelings on everyone's actions but wanted to get things back on track, he cleared his throat and asked, "So how are we going to stop the purple cloud?"

Arthur felt a ripple of energy come from Excalibur and a whisper in his mind, it was talking to him and he wanted to share it with everyone "The sword can close the rift."

"Wait, what? I thought it could only find them." Spiderman wondered, swearing he could see the sword propped up against Arthur's chair was pulsing slightly,

"It's telling me I can do it, I don't know how yet, it'll take time and it'll be tough but it can do it….I have to try" Arthur answered, trying to hide his anxiety.

"The sword talks to you?" Judy asked, flummoxed "Well it's not the craziest thing I've heard or seen today."

"So, we'll need one team guarding the mammals and the other protecting Arthur while he closes the rift." Ms Marvel proposed.

"Sounds like a plan but what about civilians? We don't want any more death." Spitfire addressed.

"I've enacted a mandatory curfew. Everyone is staying in their homes." Nick assured.

"Ok so once we destroy the purple cloud, we can get back to hunting Doom." Wasp rallied.

All of a sudden, every Zootopian's phone began to vibrate and Viv tensed up as well, the bunker's alarms started to ring out too. "What's going on?" Brawn asked, looking to Olivia for answers.

"Bella, what's the alarm for?" Olivia asked aloud to the AI.

" **It would seem Doctor Doom is transmitting a message."** Bella answered, turning off the alarms.

"To who?" Mage asked, trying to ignore his vibrating smartphone.

"To everyone." Viv answered, seeming disturbed "Come and see. That's the message."

Lylla could no longer ignore her phone, she fished it out of her blazer and unlocked it and was met with an image that was not her home screen "Uh, guys. Look at your phones." she prompted.

Every mammal with a phone and The Champions who had brought their phones with them got them out and were all met with the same three second video on a loop; Doctor Doom was standing in a snowy graveyard beside a fresh grave with a simple wooden cross on it with him saying clearly and menacingly " _Come and see."_

"I know that graveyard, it's on my Thursday patrol route." Kion said, slightly stressed "It's in Tundra Town, it's the graveyard off Sleigh street near the Wave memorial."

"He's baiting us. He's broadcasting to every device in the city." Jack concluded "We need to contact our agents and tell them not to approach them."

"Same with the ZPD." Judy agreed, reaching for her radio and relaying the order.

"So, do we take the bait?" Maiden asked Olivia, all of Ceartais were still looking to the mouse for leadership.

"Of course, we do, but we need to complete the other objectives as well. This is likely a distraction so we need to split all of us into three separate squads, one to guard the infirmary another to protect Arthur as he closes the rift and the last two have a chat with the bucket head." Olivia said, snapping her fingers and making her mech walk over to her and lift her up to the cockpit.

"What can we do to help?" Ray asked as Olivia climbed into the cockpit and closing the chest plate.

"Keep the skies over Tundra Town clear and get the military prepared for an attack, Doom has an army of Doombots, it wouldn't surprise me if he had stashed some away in the city." Spitfire replied, her voice now coming through Spitfire's speakers.

"I should get back to city hall, I need to lead the officials and all the city's departments from the crisis centre." Nick spoke up, standing up and fixing his tie "Skye, I need you with me, I need a senior fed for authority over emergency powers."

"Of course." Skye agreed "Jack needs can lead our agents from the field office."

"Commisoner Bogo is taking charge of the ZPD, but I best go to him to see if I can help." Judy stated.

"Actually Mom, I need you to stay here." Maiden cut in.

"Excuse me? Sweetie even you hadn't noticed the entire city is under marshal law and under threat from super villain and you want me to stay down here?" Judy asked dubiously.

"I need you to look after Alice." Maiden reasoned "I was fine with her being on her own when we thought the Cauldron was just crashing but now that Doom is here, I can't bear for her to be alone, please Mom."

"Ugh, I hate it when you kids guilt trip me." Judy groaned "Fine, I'll stay."

"Don't worry Judy, we won't just be sitting around. I know a way we can still fight." Alice smiled at her mother in law before looking at Spitfire and prompting "Remember the original plan for my pregnancy leave, how I could still help you fight from down here?"

"Project legion?" Spitfire remembered, she was still feeling bitter towards the bunny, but this contigency could help in the coming battle "Head up to the observation deck and Bella will set you up."

"What's project legion?" Scarlet asked, thinking she knew all the Ceartais back up plans.

"Let's just say my years of being a gamer are about to pay off." Alice replied, stretching out her fingers.

000

Snow falling from a dark purple sky looked as fascinating as it was foreboding, it looked like an illustration from a fantasy book yet the scene was made all the more modern by the sound of police sirens and helicopters flying around the city. Doctor Doom had a small smile on his face as he looked down at the fresh grave before him, he had missed the funeral of this mammal by just a few hours and it would be months until its headstone was erected as a lasting memorial but seeing the simple wooden cross with the name of the departed etched onto it brought him joy. Reed Richards, the badger who worked at the Tundra Town community college, had been murdered by Andi, after the post mortem his family requested for a funeral as soon as possible. "In this world you were but a simple teacher, Danvers a normal air force pilot, Stark a mechanic and the Storm siblings' socialites. Know that your demise made your counterparts weaker and put a smile on Doom's face." Doom spoke to the snow covered grave.

The sound of thrusters caught Doom's attention, he looked to the graveyard's entrance to see Spitifre land on the snow flanked by other heroes; Mage, Roar, Brawn and Iron Heart. As the heroes cautiously, Doom stepped away from the grave and declared loudly "Come and see."

"You think you're one of the four horsemen?" Iron Heart scoffed, slowly getting closer to the tyrant "Clara said that you were an arrogant prick."

"Stark's protégé, Iron Man says you are smarter than him but you seem to have his peasant crassness as well." Doom replied before adding "And Doom is not just a single horseman, Doom embodies all four and before this day is over this city shall suffer Doom's full wrath for you so called heroes' transgressions."

"Hey buddy, we didn't crash your ship, so that one is not on us." Mage tried to act cool, but even in the cold air of tundra town he was feeling hot with nerves "No one has to get hurt, your plan for a super army failed so go back through the portal, back to Latvaria and accept your defeat."

"Doom has had some setbacks but this war is far from over." Doom said with confidence "Doom would've been happy with the powers of the kidnapped mammals, and rest assured those mammals will be brought back to Doom but now it's time for a fresh harvest of powers." the tyrant then pressed a few keys on the small holo keyboard on his wrists and the doors of a nearby mausoleum opened, before motioning to the crypt and inviting "Come and see."

"I'll check it out. You keep an eye on him." Brawn volunteered, keeping his gaze on Doom as he walked the fifty or so metres across the snowy cemetery to the mausoleum. The green teen peered into the darkened room and gasped at what he was. It was a container, made of thick bulletproof glass and protected by multiple electronic locks and pressure sensors, inside was a gas whirling filtering between the colours purple and green "Is that terrigen mist!?" Brawn asked loudly at Doom.

"A variation of Doom's making, intercut with the x gene, gamma energy and a little bit of magic." Doom answered, glad to see he had frightened Brawn.

"What's terrigen mist?" Mage asked, wondering what had Brawn so worried.

"It's the stuff that activates powers in Inhumans, it's how Ms Marvel got her powers, so whatever that new concoction is, it's designed to give people powers like how Scarlet got her 'Mirror' ability." Iron Heart deduced, sounding a little shaky.

"With this mist, Doom will harness the energy of the rift and spread a storm across Zootopia and imbue even more mammals with super powers and the best shall be sacrificed for the safety of Latvaria and Doom's home dimension." Doom announced, "When that rift reaches peak energy, that vial shall open and Zootopia shall become the smithy to forge Latvaria's new army."

"And you think we're just going to let you get away with that? You just revealed your entire evil plan to us." Roar growled "Like a stereotypical bad guy."

"Doom told you so you'd die knowing you couldn't protect your city. I was hoping all of you would come but the others must be guarding that makeshift hospital they've created at the MCB, Doom will enjoy the video feed of the Doombots tearing your friend's limb from limb." Doom taunted.

Spitfire had heard enough, it was time for action "Ironheart, see if you deactivate the power bomb, Roar shut this arsehole's mouth, will ya'?" she commanded.

"With pleasure." Roar growled, charging at the cloaked menace, Roar threw a right hook at Doom only for his fist to be blocked by a single hand of the villain. Roar was so shocked by the fact that his punch had been blocked he had hesitated for a second, Doom took advantage of his distraction and grabbed the lion by the mane and launching him into an angel statue that was reduced to rubble as Roar crashed through it and landed on his back with a groan.

Brawn had already been running towards Doctor Doom and the second Roar had been thrown Brawn had attempted send a roundhouse kick to Doom's chest but the dictator had seen the move coming and gripped the young hero's leg before it struck him and used the momentum to slam him into a row of tombstones, knocking them all down.

Spitfire had been setting up her micro missiles all the while and fired a barrage at Doom once he had thrown Brawn, Doom turned in time to see the missiles coming towards him but not attempt to dodge. The missiles exploded on the villain, the explosion sending a shockwave through the graveyard but as the smoke settled Doom stood unfazed, only his cloak was burnt and tattered. Doom waved his hand and his green cloak magically repaired itself "What else have you got, Little mouse?" he coaxed.

"Fuck." Spitfire whispered, she knew this would be a tough fight but she had underestimated how powerful he truly was, Spitfire tried to gather her courage as the self-proclaimed horseman walked towards her but she would not give up. Mage got out his trick cards while Spitfire activated her electro gauntlets and used Doom's own words against him in a war cry "Come and see, you bastard!"

(AN/DUN DUN DUN! Zootopia is at risk from a power bomb!? The infirmary is about to be attacked by Doombots? Can Arthur close the rift? What did you guys think, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on TBM; Sirius rallies her former prison mates, Arthur and Scarlet hit a roadblock to closing the rift and Alice tries to help. PLEASE Review and c ya soon...)


	47. Stupid Ideas

(AN/ Hey folks I'm back after, work has been crazy at the moment, the heatwave is causing a lot of trouble. Anyway thank you for your patience, your messages of support, reviews, reblogs, faves and follows. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 46- Stupid Ideas**

Alice could feel Judy's amethyst eyes burning into her, she didn't have to look at her mother in law to know she was on the receiving end of a judging glare. Alice was bothered by the fact that Judy was mad at her, she was, after all, the only mother figure she had, but the crisis erupting in Zootopia took priority over family strife.

Alice was sat at the main computer in the bunker's observation desk, quickly typing away to set up the legion program that Olivia had installed a few months before. Jason was busying himself, trying to help the two rabbits by preparing lunch for them and once the mission was under way, he'd watch from the Observation deck with them, wanting to know about the safety of his friends. Alice finished typing up another set of commands before sighing "Judy you have about three minutes until Jason returns from the kitchen so if you have anything to say, now would be the time."

Judy folded her arms and glared a little harder before answering "I'm mad at you, I'm mad at Luna and I'm mad at the others who joined you on your stupid idea."

"My stupid idea is the only reason we're having this conversation and the reasons you have heroes to protect this city." Alice replied, clicking the return key to activate the program then swivelling her chair so she could face Judy.

"That's great and all but that doesn't hide the fact that Luna and you put both your necks on the line, and for what? Revenge?" Judy accused "And don't go sugar coating saying 'It was for the mission' because we both know the main reasons you both did it; vengeance, Luna wanted to beat Andi for this Steve guy and you wanted to get back at Luna for lying to you."

"All true." Alice accepted "But I stand by the choices."

Judy was frustrated that Alice didn't even look remorseful, she thumped her right foot quickly on the floor then barked "You're about to be a mother for god's sake, you put your babies in danger!"

"I was perfectly safe as I explained during the meeting." Alice answered, remaining calm.

"Safe?" Judy scoffed "How about when you're hoo-man twin tried to stab you with a shuriken?"

"Her arm was severed before she could pull it from her belt, I had it under control." Alice answered "But please understand, I know what I did hurt the team and I'm sorry for making the situation worse but I wanted my kits home and to give Luna a taste of her own medicine but there's nothing that can change that now."

Judy let a stressed groan before walking over to Alice and taking hold of her paw and saying "You're lucky you're family, Alice. Me and Nick are both really angry at what you and Luna did but I need you to promise me something."

"Anything." Alice replied

"Don't do anything that stupid again, these kids need their Moms." Judy asked, putting her other paw on Alice's bump.

"I promise." Alice nodded, she waited a few seconds before asking "I'm still not off the hook am I?"

"Not by a long shot." Judy said sternly, flopping into the other swivel chair "So what do I need to do with this legion thing, you said we could use it to keep the citizens safe?"

"Over the years Olivia has built over three hundred variations of the Spitfire mech and they're all ready to use, we can pilot them from here." Alice explained, pressing a couple of keys and making a pair of joysticks appear at each workstation "Bella can handle most of the mechs but there are three other Doombot proof mechs, one spare for Olivia and the other two we can control. Just like a videogame."

"Wait, so we're going to help Ceartais and The Champions fight?" Judy enquired, sounding intimidated.

"I'll be fighting, I need you to be sweeping the city streets, helping citizens get somewhere safe." Alice corrected, activating her mech, a small holo screen appearing in front of her displaying the HUD of mech D006.

Judy did the same and took hold of her joysticks "It's been a while since I played a videogame, I used to play them all the time with the girls when they were little but this feels, well, a little scary." she said as mech D005 came online.

"Just imagine you're back on the beat but you're not a bunny, you're a robot and your primary objective is to make sure mammals don't die." Alice tried to empower.

"Worst pep talk ever." Judy grumbled at her daughter in law.

Just then Jason walked back into the observation deck with a tray of food in his paws, the caracal just looked happy to be helping in any shape or form "Ok we've got two cheese salad sandwiches with extra mayo, two bags of potato chips for Alice, a bag of fried crickets for Chief Wilde and carrot cake muffins with two sodas as well." Jason listed, putting the tray on the work station between the two bunnies.

" _Merci,_ Jason." Alice smiled sweetly at the boy "You're such a good kid, I hope these little ones grow up to be as nice as you."

Jason didn't answer but his bashful look spoke volumes.

Judy took a bite of her sandwich and asked with a full mouth "So if I'm going to be on the streets, where are you going to be?"

"At the weather control plant, that's where Arthur is trying to close the rift, I have to help out if Doom or his robots try to stop them." Alice asked, taking control of her mech and making it fly out of the bunker and north east towards her destination.

000

Arthur was cursing his bad luck as he looked up at the rift, the wisps of purple gas and small sparks of lighting emerging from it only added to his dread. Viv had figured out that the weather control plant bordering the rainforest district and savannah central was the closest point to the rift while not being airborne. The group consisting of Arthur, Viv, Wasp, Snowguard and Scarlet had made their way to the top of wall/plant while telling all worker to evacuate.

"Ok, that's everyone in the vicinity evacuated. I told them to get home and stay safe." Scarlet informed, making her way down the platform to join the others while some very frightened engineers made a break for the nearest exit.

"We need to spread ourselves out to protect Arthur and to be on the lookout for anyone trying to stop him." Viv commanded, pointing Snowguard and Wasp to their spots.

"While I try something that a magic bloody sword told me to do." Arthur grimaced, removing Excalibur from the magnet sheath on his back.

"Don't worry you can do this, we've got your back." Scarlet encouraged.

"Wow you can be nice when you want to be." Arthur joked awkwardly.

"Don't get used to it, it's only because we're facing death." Scarlet joked, before jogging off to her look out spot.

"We have faith in you Arthur, all you can do is your best." Viv said kindly before floating off to her designated spot.

Arthur gripped his sword tightly and took a few breaths, trying to clear his mind and communicate with the mysterious weapon. His fur and the blade shone with blue light as the sword began to vibrate in his paws "I need you to close the rift." He implored, the sword then began to pulse, slowly at first then picking up the pace. "Ok so something's happening." He gulped before aiming the weapon at the tear in the sky as the pulse and vibration got more and more intense; a stream of blue light shot out from the sword and struck the rift, the recoil from the strike nearly Arthur off of his feet. The rift then began to have blue light ripple through the clouds and even though it would take some time until it was completely shut everyone noticed the mass of the purple cloud becoming smaller albeit slowly.

"Holy crap, it's working." Wasp gasped.

"No sign of any Doombots yet." Snowguard said cautiously, she had transformed into a sea eagle for better eye sight.

Scarlet was about to share in Snowguard's cautious words but stopped when she looked up at the rift at a very funny looking cloud, it was small and blackish purple and descending towards the weather control plant "What the?" she mumbled, but then she spotted another one then another, until there were dozens of the things heading for them "Yo, we've got company, look up!"

Arthur had been so focused on controlling the sword that he hadn't noticed the small clouds approaching but when he saw the bright sets of eyes on each cloud he knew exactly what they were "Wraiths!" He yelled to the others but as soon as he did the hundred or so creatures heading right for him let a collective shriek that made him shudder.

"I thought these things feed on the rift!?" Snowguard asked, quickly transforming back into her human form and charging towards the centre of the platform where Arthur was standing.

"They do, but right now he's trying to take away their food supply." Wasp deduced, flying over and getting her blasters ready.

"Alice, ETA on your mech and the legion getting here? We've got enemies inbound." Scarlet asked through her comm, running to join the defensive ring around Arthur.

" **Just left the bunker, should be there in three minutes."** Alice answered, the line sounding a little more staticky than usual " **Wait I've just spotted a pile up, mammals are still trapped in the cars, I'll be with you as soon as I get them safe!"**

"No worries, I'll leave a few of them for ya'." Scarlet grinned, getting out her baton and extending it.

"Tight formation team, don't let them get at Arthur!" Viv rallied as the storm of wraiths got closer and closer towards them, when she was sure her blast would hit she fired her energy beam from the gold covered gem on her forehead, disintegrating the wraith.

The swarm of wraiths reached fighting distance of the heroes and they launched themselves into action, Wasp was firing out shots from her wrist blasters at a rapid pace as she flew around Arthur, luckily her aim assistant program in her helmet was helping highlight any targets in her vision, the only problem it was taking four to six shots to down one wraith. Snowguard reached inside her soul and pulled forth the powers bestowed to her by the spirit of the north, her eyes shone bright as streams of light broke free from her palms, the borealis blast illuminated the platform with it's beautiful light but it was not taking out as many wraiths as she wanted.

"They keep coming." Viv said, sounding uncharacteristically flustered as she tried to push back the wraiths but she was having trouble matching their speed.

Scarlet was the one closest to Arthur and for the first fifteen seconds of the battle striking the wraiths with a mix of her fists and baton was working but as brought down her stick for an attack it passed straight through the wraith and clunked on the floor. Before Scarlet could react the wraith she had been attacking was destroyed by a gem lazer beam from Viv, she then quickly informed "They can change their density to suit them."

"So my attacks won't do squat!?" Scarlet snapped.

"Ok that's it!" Wasp yelled "Time to pull out the big guns!" She flew over to a large clearing where they stored chemical barrels in cages before pressing a button and growing to a sixty foot giant in the blink of an eye, she then started to use the much bigger blasters to destroy groups of wraiths swarming at Arthur. But one blast tore through a pack of the monsters and struck one of the cages containing the flammable chemicals and ignited instantly, the explosion shocking the heroes but the shrieks of the wraiths caught Scarlet's attention. The wraiths caught in the fireball of the explosion were instantly destroyed and their brethren shrieked louder and avoided like the plague "Fire! They hate fire!" Scarlet panted as the battle raged around her, an idea came alive in her mind and it was crazy enough to work "Wasp grab those barrels and pour them out in a circle around Arthur, these creeps hate fire!"

Wasp had heard the plan and processed the risks and replied while still blasting wraiths "If I light them up with my blaster you'll all be caught in the explosion! You need a small flame to light the fluid away from the barrels!"

Scarlet looked to the staff office where the engineers had been, she remembered when she rushed in the smell of cigarette smoke was quite heavy in the room "Just pour out the barrels, I'll grab a lighter." she shouted her reply as she bounded towards the portacabin office.

"Argh!" Arthur howled in pain, a trio of wraiths were slashing their smoky claws at him but he stood firm.

Snowguard reacted by hitting them with precision, the wisps of darkness dying in a wave of multicoloured lights "Hang on Arthur, Scarlet's plan is just crazy enough to work."

Scarlet burst through the door of the break room portacabin, her eyes darting around the very normal looking kitchen and seating area desperately searching for anything that could spark. Her vision locked on the kitchen counter and saw a deck of cigarettes with a lighter resting on top of it. She rushed over, scooped up the lighter and tested it to see if it worked, when she saw the flame she gasped "Oh thank god." before running back out the door.

However in the short time she had been gone the situation had grown more dire; Viv and Snowguard were trying and failing to keep the wraiths from attacking Arthur, the blue furred wolf wasn't budging but his face displayed his pain as he was clawed at over and over, above them Wasp had finished pouring the fuel out but her giant form was being swarmed by wraiths. They were going to lose this battle unless something changed drastically. Another idea then struck Scarlet's mind, a very stupid one, so stupid she even knew it was stupid. The hybrid bolted toward the centre of the platform, leaping into the battle, she found a flammable barrel to the side and stood in the pool of liquid that had poured from it. "Scarlet, what-" was all Snowguard managed to say before delivering another borealis blast to some wraiths.

"This will work." Scarlet said with a confident tone, despite feeling extreme doubt over this plan. She kept her smile as she flicked the lighter and brought forth it's small flame, she dropped it and felt a torrent of fear hit her as she watched it get ever closer to the chemical puddle she was stood in. In a chain reaction the flame hit the fuel, igniting all the fluid encircled around them, Scarlet suppressed a cry as the flames danced on her feet but then the trail of fire hit the steel drum behind her and exploded engulfing the hero in fire and imbedding multiple metal shards in her back. The shouts of terror and concern from the other heroes could not be heard by the cacophony of the wraiths shrieking and the screams of pain from Scarlet. The heroine emerged like a devil from the pits of hell as she leapt at the wraiths attacking Arthur, each of her strikes hit with deadly accuracy but with each punch and kick that reduced the creatures to nothing Scarlet screamed louder and louder with pain. Her new suit was protecting the majority of her body from the burns but the fire had quickly devoured her mask and hood and was making its way through her face; her fur had already been singed away, her skin had been charred black with cracks of red when the flesh had torn and every nerve ending was electrified with agony. And despite her feet and fists being aflame as well she kept on fighting. The ring of fire around Arthur was working, the wraiths were avoiding it, all that was left were the dregs trapped by the inferno that the fighting fireball was taking out with ferocity. "How has she not collapsed?!" Viv asked out of sheer disbelief, flying over to Wasp to help get rid of the swarm covering her.

But there was no answer, only Scarlet's screams and the wraith's shrieks, Arthur was finally free of attack, he could focus all his energy on using Excalibur to close the rift. He daren't look at Scarlet, lest he stop his task and help his comrade, his mission was too important. The rift needed to be closed and there was still a ways to go.

000

The missiles exploded on the villain, the explosion sending a shockwave through the graveyard but as the smoke settled Doom stood unfazed, only his cloak was burnt and tattered. Doom waved his hand and his green cloak magically repaired itself "What else have you got, Little mouse?" he coaxed.

"Fuck." Spitfire whispered, she knew this would be a tough fight but she had underestimated how powerful he truly was, Spitfire tried to gather her courage as the self proclaimed horseman walked towards her but she would not give up, she activated her electro gauntlets and used his own words against him in a war cry "Come and see, you bastard!"

Doom was about to charge, his pictured in his mind plunging his fist through the chest armour of the mech pulling out it's rodent pilot and crushing her in an instant but a sound other than an explosion halted the fight. The shriek of hundreds reached the ears of the combatants, Doom got out of his fighting stance and bellowed "WHAT!?" before flying off towards the weather control plant near the rift.

"I'm on his tail!" Mage volunteered, already levitating.

"Mage, hold!" Spitfire commanded "Doom's just left that power bomb thing, undefended. We need to deactivate it before he comes back." Mage descended back to the ground and put his cards back.

Brawn was struggling to his feet, wincing from the pain of being knocked through so many tombstones while asking "W-what about the t-team there?"

"Alice has a legion of mechs already heading there and we'll back them up once we've defused this bomb." Spitfire informed, using her boosters to quickly get over to Roar who was groaning on the floor.

"Doom...he just kicked my ass..." Roar panted with utter shock, getting to his feet with the help of Spitfire.

"And he ate my missiles like it was brunch." Spitfire empathised.

"That strength, only Kiara has been able to beat me physically before...we're in trouble, aren't we?" Roar asked, sounding shaken.

"We still have a mission to complete, let's ask Iron Heart what she's found out?" Spitfire tried to offer some hope, as herself, Roar, Mage and Brawn entered the mausoleum.

"Riri, be honest with us, what's our situation?" Brawn asked gently, the right edge of his lips dripping with green blood.

"Doctor Doom is a genius, that's our situation." Riri let out a heavy sigh, looking at the bomb with equal wonder and terror "This bomb is locked down tighter than nuclear launch codes, it's can't be hacked, even by our tech. If we try to move it, the pressure sensors will activate the power bomb early and Doom's put runes around the payload to prevent any magic spells transporting it out of this tomb."

Mage eyed the runes and hated that Riri was right, he just grimaced "Oh shit."

"So we can't deactivate it, we can't move it and Mage can't use his sling ring to whoosh this thing into another dimension." Spitfire summed up, inside the mech she was puling at the fur atop her head. "Mage, go after Doom, your magic might keep him at bay, he was heading for the weather control plant."

"On it." Mage obeyed, rushing out of the mausoleum and soaring into the sky.

There was a spell of silence over the remaining heroes for more than a few moments until Brawn said in a nervous tone "I've got an idea."

"You do?" Spitfire asked, sounding surprised and grateful.

"Who's leading the team at the infirmary?" Brawn asked back, pulling out his broken ear piece that was smashed during the fight.

"Ms Marvel." Spitfire replied quickly.

"Patch me through to her comms, now!" Brawn implored.

000

What Esso was first aware of the voices around her, they sounded familiar and didn't cause alarm but soon enough memories started trickling back to her; the control deck, the water tanks, then...Fuli. The lynx bolted up in bed and was immediately embraced by a few sets of paws "Easy there, Cat." Rocket's voice lulled.

"You don't want to do yourself anymore damage." Zoe eased, the soldier now freshly showered and in a clean set of combat fatigues.

"What, where the hell..." Esso breathed heavily, until her eyes finally assessed her surroundings, she was in a very spartan hospital room with barely any equipment or comforts, only an IV infusion pump and an vitals monitor.

"Esso, we're home, we're in Zootopia, they found you outside the prison ship, fainted." Zoe explained, easing the lynx back down onto her pillows.

"You're the hero of the hour Cat, enjoy it." Rocket grinned with pride, sitting on the edge of her hospital bed.

"I can't..." Esso began her sentence but was stopped by a complete mind block, the last thing she remembered was reaching the heavily humid deck where the water was stored on The Cauldron.

"The bookie of pudding cups turned saviour, I've never been more glad to be proved wrong." Sirius spoke from the bed end.

Esso focused on the figure who had just spoke, she saw a she-wolf with a golden fur colour and that spoke with a recognisable Brooklyn accent but the canine was dressed in a very bizarre outfit "Clara?" Esso asked.

"They call me Sirius, now." the heroine declared.

Esso felt sore and tired but despite her pain she let out a snigger, that turned into a snort that evolved into a belly laugh "Sirius? Seriously? You look like a nerd's wet dream, where did you get that costume? A failing sex shop?"

"Oh come on, I like my super suit." Sirius replied, this was the first time her uniform had been critiqued.

"You look like a superhero's domanatrix, seriously how much boobs and ass do you need to show?" Esso laughed her question with Rocket and Zoe trying their best to contain their own giggles.

"I'm body confident." Sirius stated "And my boyfriend likes my outfit."

"I'm sure he does, I bet he's got a constant hard on seeing you in that." Esso teased but then her face turned serious "Wait your boyfriend? You found him?"

Sirius was glad to move away from being ridiculed and confirmed "I found him and Team Ceartais plus a whole other version of New York."

"But we're home now? We're really back in Zootopia?" Esso asked, looking around her.

"We're in the infirmary wing of the MCB field office in the Meadowlands." Zoe clarified "All the other kidnapped mammals are here to for protection."

"Protection from who?" Esso questioned, fixing her hospital gown.

"Well you know how we crashed the ship? Well Doom ain't happy about it and we're betting he's going to send a whole battalion of Doom bots to take you all back." Rocket explained, getting off the bed and picking up his huge lazer rifle he had resting beside a chair.

"You're joking?" Esso asked glibly.

"I'm afraid not, we've got some Ceartais members and two of The Champions to help but we're going to need everyone to fight if they come knocking." Zoe replied "Including you."

"Ok...this is a lot to process." Esso groaned and took a moment "Fine I'll fight but who the hell are The Champions?"

Sirius began to explain but her words didn't reach Esso, the lynx's attention was fixed on the window into the hallway where a female otter and a male silver fox were looking directly. They were both in suits making Esso think they were MCB agents, they were speaking to one another but the feline couldn't read their lips but it was the way they were looking her that made her concerned. Esso had a checkered past when it came to the law and had been interrogated as a suspect multiple times and the way the otter and the fox were looking at her was the same look every cop had given her when they were about to charge her with a crime. But for the life of her, Esso had no idea what crime she had commited.

On the same floor, in the armoury, Jack Savage was showing Maiden and Ms Marvel some of the weapons they had recovered from the condos Doom has acquired. "Can any of these weapons help fight Doom's robots?" Jack asked, motioning to some of the high tech looking guns.

"Weapons aren't really my thing, but I'm sure Bullet and Rocket can make use of these." Ms Marvel replied.

Jack's ears went droopy at the mention of his daughter before mumbling "Once we sort out this mess, it's going to be tense in the family for a while."

Maiden shared a guilty look and responded with a sullen "Sorry Uncle Jack, I'm the reason this all happened."

"Luna, hush." Jack soothed "I'm sure the last thing you need is yet another lecture, just now you're still family and I love you."

Maiden couldn't help but hug the striped bunny, it was welcome to hear words of comfort instead of criticism but she had to add "But I've made things weird between you, Skye and Bullet."

"Bullet made her own decisions, she has to answer for them...I agree with Skye but I can see why Bullet did it. I'm stuck between a rock and hard place on this one." Jack confided.

Ms Marvel felt awkward in the midst of this conversation and was about to back out of the armoury to let the two mammals talk in peace but stopped when she saw a quiver among the weapons "Wait is that Andi's?" she asked, pointing at the quiver.

Maiden went over and recognised the green leather design, it was like her old one but only bigger, she crouched down and picked it up "Oh Luna." she sighed, picturing the bruised face of her alternate self she had said goodbye to in the church.

"She must've had a stash here for when she assassinated those mammals." Jack figured.

"Can you use those arrows?" Ms Marvel queried.

"They're a little big but the experimental arrow heads can be mounted onto my arrows." Maiden replied, inspecting the quiver to find explosive, corrosive, cryo, sonic and EMP arrows but there was one type of arrow she didn't recognise. It's tail was dark blue, she pulled it from the quiver and saw a blue vial within the modified arrowhead "Night howler?" she gasped.

"Damn, she had that as weapon?" Jack grunted.

"One of those arrows caused the death of SHIELD agents and the villain they were escorting to prison, they tore each other apart." Ms Marvel recalled the fate of Crossbones.

Suddenly Maiden and Ms Marvel's comms buzzed into life with Bullet's voice " **Guys, Spiderman's spotted Doombots through the lenses in his mask, they're about three miles out."**

"How many?" Maiden asked with urgency.

" **He said he's not sure but at least a hundred."** Bullet answered " **We best get ready to fight."**

"You and Spidey stick on the roof, Rocket will join you. Me, Big M, Zoe and that lynx girl will protect the infirmary." Maiden ordered before hurrying out the door with Ms Marvel and Jack following her.

The three were headed to Esso's room when Ms Marvel's comm buzzed again " **Ms Marvel, are you there!?"** Brawn asked with force.

"Brawn, I'm a little busy, we've got a hundred Doom Bots heading our way." Ms Marvel answered, slightly irked as she jogged down the hall with Maiden and Jack.

" **Well you're going to have to fight through them to get to us."** Brawn responded.

"What the heck are you talking about?" Ms Marvel asked with a snap.

" **We need Nightcrawler in this cemetery ASAP, or Zootopia is going to be hell on earth!"**

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! What did you guys think? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on TBM; The fight at the rift takes a terrifying turn, the infirmary become a battleground and one member of the team makes the entire situation a lot worse. The Next chapter will be coming the 7th of August because I'll be going to Manchester Comic con all this weekend so I'll have no time to write. So please review and c ya soon...)


	48. Murphy's Law

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. I'm finally back after a week off for Comic con in Manchester and also I got injured at work so I had to write two thirds of this chapter with just one hand so that was fun. Anyway thanks for all the awesome messages and reviews. So without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 47- Murphy's law.**

The infirmary was full to capacity. Luckily none of the Mammals rescued from the crashed Cauldron had any life threatening injuries, a few broken bones and some cuts and bruises was the extent of the damage. Dragoness was stood in front of Nightcrawler's bed, the mutant was still unconscious but he was stable, Beast had hooked him up to the vitals monitor and put in an IV to help rehydrate his old friend. "He looks like a stick, Doom mustn't have been feeding him well." Dragoness commented with sympathy, the mutant's chest was exposed and his ribs were very pronounced.

"Doom was feeding him through a tube, I've removed it but it'll take some time before he can eat properly again." Beast replied, applying dressings to the cuts on Nightcrawler.

"Hey can I ask something?" A voice queried from above the two, both looked up to see Zoe hanging upside down with her feet gripping the mesh of the air vent.

"Uh, yes." Beast said awkwardly, a little surprised by the bat's sudden appearance.

"Are all mutants blue?...oh wait I just realized how speciest that sounds." Zoe back peddled.

Beast gave a light chuckle before answering "No we're not all blue, there are a few of us but no. We come in many ethnicities, shapes, sizes and faiths just like mammals in this world."

Dragoness studied Zoe for a moment, taking note of the similar piercing placements and fur dyes on the flying fox's head that resembled the dyes in her own hair "So you're the Zootopia version of me?" she asked, finding the situation a tad spooky.

"And you're the inhuman version of me, nice to meetcha'." Zoe grinned, flapping down and perching on the end of the hospital bed.

"Fascinating, even though your larynxes are vastly different shapes your voices are identical." Beast marvelled.

"So even when I'm not inhuman, I can still fly." Dragoness spoke, extending her wings, with one being a prosthetic.

"Looks like you've been through some scrapes as well, soldier." Zoe sympathised, reaching out and touching the lightweight material of the artificial wing.

Dragoness noticed the wedding band on Zoe's finger and smiled sadly "Your Aleks, is he still around?"

"Foxy? Yeah he's around here somewhere." Zoe answered obliviously, taking more notice of how pretty her alternate self was than the tone of her voice.

"...I'm glad, you take care of him, ok?" Dragoness said, her voice growing sombre.

Zoe finally clicked, although the thought made her shudder, she began to ask "Wait is your Aleks..."

"Where's Nightcrawler!?" Ms Marvel yelled as she burst into the infirmary with Maiden and Jack beside her, their abrupt entrance shocking the occupants.

"Ms Marvel, please keep your voice down, these patients are trying to recover." Beast said critically.

"Look Beast, you need to wake Kurt up right now, we need him to stop Doom's plan!" Ms Marvel replied, still in a loud voice, she rushed over to the mutant's hospital bed.

"Say what now?" Dragoness reacted.

"Doom's planning to release something like terrigen mist on Zootopia, everyone in the city will get powers and Doom's going to enslave the most powerful. Nightcrawler is the only one who can get the power bomb out of the city." Ms Marvel explained at rapid speed.

"Plus there's a hundred of them Doombot things flying towards us as we speak." Jack added before hollering at the powered mammals "If any of you can fight, now is the time!" some of them grew frightened but a few rose to their feet, ready for anything.

"I'll head to the roof, I'm better out in the open." Dragoness said quickly before zipping out of the room with an energy rifle in her hands.

"We can't move Kurt even if we wanted to, his body is exhausted." Beast explained to the other heroes.

"Then we'll carry him," Maiden stated, rushing over to the drug cabinet and swiftly drawing up a clear fluid in a syringe "and I've got a little something to wake him up."

"You want to wake him up with adrenaline? You could put him into cardiac arrest with a wrong dose!" Beast fretted.

"Trust me, I'm a doctor too." Maiden replied, pushing by Beast and plunging the syringe into Nightcrawler's IV cannula and hoping that he would open his eyes.

A few floors above the infirmary Dragoness emerged through the roof access door to find Rocket, Spiderman and Bullet, poised and ready for battle. The inhuman glided over to survey the situation, Doombots were moving like a swarm towards them, they were still about a mile and a half out. "It's a god damn shooting gallery." Rocket smarmed, getting his most powerful guns ready, he had laid them out all around him so he could pick another up as soon as he ran out of ammo.

"They're trying to overwhelm us, take advantage of us battling and snatch the powered mammals." Bullet deduced, sensing the mass of machines in the distance and never being more glad that she had brought back the alien guns from the other dimension.

"We have to wipe out as many as possible to make a clear way for Ms Marvel and Maiden to get Nightcrawler to the cemetery and stop the power bomb." Spiderman declared, he had been brought up to speed via the comm link.

"Why can't Mage just do his portal thing and grab the blue dude?" Rocket questioned.

"Spitfire sent him to distract Doom, at the moment Kodi's magic is one of the few things that can even slow Doctor Doom down." Bullet answered, her mind drifting to the wellbeing of her friends and most pressing; her wife.

"Ok but what about Danvers and the other Avengers, couldn't you've dropped them a call?" Rocket groused.

"Oh gee Rocket why didn't I think of that?" Dragoness answered back sarcastically "Of course SHIELD tried to assemble The Avengers but Iron Man's fighting the Mandarin, Captain Marvel is on a mission with Alpha Flight in space, Thor and She-Hulk are on a romantic trip on the other side of the galaxy, Black Panther is off the grid on a secret op and Doctor Strange and Ghost Rider are literally in hell trying to rescue an innocent wizard...so yeah we're on our own."

"Damn it." Rocket grunted but soon smiled with confidence "I just got Lylla back, ain't no way that bucket head is ruining this for me."

"And I'm not going to die until I patch things up with Robyn." Bullet promised herself, griping the two bladed energy pistols she had 'Borrowed' from the SHIELD armoury.

"Ok, Pete, let's see what you programmed this suit with." Spiderman said quietly, he had been reluctant to activate the 'Instant kill' mode that the previous Spiderman had installed into the suit's interface but he had no problem destroying Doombots "Activate Instant Kill mode!" he then extended his arms and let out to powerful balls of corrosive webs from his web shooters, both travelling as fast and as far as a sniper round, finding two Doombots and melting through their heads.

"Oh and first blood goes to Spidey, can't let a kid show me up." Dragoness smirked, levelling her kree rifle and began firing at the fast approaching hoard of Doombots.

"Party time, bitches!" Rocket cheered, using a custom xandarian missile launcher to fire a dozen missiles at the Doombots.

"Oo-de-lally!" Bullet cheered as she began to fire shot after shot, a Doombot swooped down at her trying to take he out with one hit but she twirled out of the way and fired at it's metal skull. Before it fell to the ground Bullet used the now headless Doombot as a launching pad and sprung into the air delivering a barrage of well placed shots to the machine's brethren.

Spiderman webbed up another bot and used him as a flail, spinning him in the air and sending it crashing into other bots while Dragoness took to the air and tried to take out as many as she could smashing through the windows but she could only stop a couple, the army of automatons was heading to the infirmary no matter how many bots the heroes took out.

The Doombots were following the unique energy signature of the rift powered mammals as they tore through the field office, all MCB agents had been ordered to stand down and let the heroes take care of the attackers. The Doombots had no concept of rage or confidence, they were just golems but with their programming Doctor Doom had gave them it showed a 94% chance of a successful mission. They were about to find this percentage was an overestimation.

Before they could break through the double doors of the infirmary a huge mass of roots and vines burst through and splintered the doors crushing a few of the Doombots against the wall. The source of the plants lead back to the hooves of a stag with a swollen eye "I won't let you take her again!" Harper boomed, as thick bark covered his body like armour.

"You want take any of us!" Regina yelled, albeit still terrified. The tall mare holding out her hooves and producing a powerful torrent of water that collided with a Doombot.

One Doombot managed to scramble through and tried to grab a Sugar Glider with a broken leg, cowering in his hospital bed but stopped in its tracks, it turned around suddenly and began attacking it's fellow bots "I never saw the appeal of puppets before but this is freaking awesome." Zoe grinned, hanging upside down from a light fitting while using technomancer powers.

More started to pile through the doorway, as a brace of Doombots tried to grab a semi conscious zebra from her bed but a sphere of yellow light surrounded the bed just as they reached out, the light severing their arms. Vanessa emerged from behind the bed, her eyes glowing yellow "We won't be prisoners again." she growled.

"I'm not saying something cheesy..." Esso groaned, walking up towards not caring that her bare butt could be seen in the hospital gown, she then began to let out screams at regular intervals, aiming the sonic screeches at the machines, the vibrations tearing through their metal and destroying their circuitry.

"And you were critiquing how I looked?" Sirius cackled, floating in the air and firing energy blasts rapidly at the Doombots.

"How long do we have to keep this up!?" Vanessa shouted over Esso's sonic screams, making more light shields to protect the vulnerable mammals unable to fight.

"Until they're all dead and Maiden and Ms Marvel are clear of the building!" Sirius shouted back, blasting another bot before mumbling "Their plan better work." Sirius liked having powers but for everyone else in this infirmary had been through hell since they had their powers forced upon them, and now Doom was planning to create an entire city of mammals with powers it made her think of the despair that was on the horizon. Sirius was going to save her friends then she was going to fight at the other heroes' side and kick Doom's ass.

On the roof of the MCB field office a laugh could be heard "You want some, you bastards?!" Rocket laughed manically as he zipped through the sky with his jetpack recovered from the Cauldron's lock up. He was wielding a lazer handgun and the plasma pistol he got from Tazerface, taking out every Doombot in sight.

"Guys, I hear a truck starting up in the garage, it's them, they're making their move to the cemetery!" Bullet informed, ducking and weaving to avoid getting hit by a Doombotengaging her.

"Make sure not one Doombot gets on that truck!" Dragoness stated, swooping and shooting.

The sound of the large parking lot gates opening put the heroes on high alert, the screech of tires and revs of an engine was then heard before a black armoured MCB van tore out onto the street and towards Tundra Town. Some Doombots took notice and gave chase but the others had it covered, most were brought down with gun fire but Spiderman wrapped two up in webs before delivering a destructive dose of his venom blast, frying their circuits. As the truck turned the corner, he whispered "You got this girls, you can do it."

000

Scarlet's stupid idea had worked. Her fiery form had managed to keep the wraiths off of Arthur and given the three Champions fighting alongside them enough momentum to get them to overcome the hoard of shadow creatures. The wraiths that remained were keeping their distance from Arthur for the time being or had gone back to the massive tear in the sky to feast upon its energy. Arthur was still standing strong as a sentinel, Excalibur in his paws and still aiming the massive beam of blue light at the rift, slowly but surely closing it "How's Scarlet holding up?" he couldn't help but ask, the smell singed fur and burning flesh was making his skin crawl.

"Uh, ok I think." Wasp struggled to answer, the Russian heroine had returned to her normal size and was stepping closer to Scarlet, who was hunched over and making odd wheezing noises. Her suit appeared undamaged but her feet and paws were charred black and bleeding with not a single strand of her fur to be seen.

Viv did a quick scan and relayed "Her heart and brain function are normal and her nanomachines are busy repairing the damage."

Snowguard took a few cautious steps forward and asked carefully "Scarlet, you alright?"

Scarlet turned to face to Snowguard but the hybrid could not see the Champion, because her eyeballs had burst from the intense heat. She could not talk because her tongue had shrivelled to a small black lump that resembled charcoal. Her skin had begun to repair itself, but the exposed muscles and heavily burned skin just added to the horror of the sight. Snowguard staggered back in fright before keeling over and throwing up, Wasp hurried over to hold back her friend's hair and sooth the youngest member of the team.

"Despite her appearance, Scarlet is still in control and her brain was undamaged so she has not gone 'Savage'." Viv explained, unfazed by the gruesome sight before prompting "Scarlet if you can hear us, please give us a sign."

Scarlet wheezed and spluttered before slowly raising her right paw and flipping Viv the bird with a partly skeletal finger just as her left eyeball began to reform.

"Yeah, that's Robyn in there." Wasp laughed uncomfortably as Snowguard continued to vomit.

"Extraordinary." A deep voice said from out of nowhere, everyone (Bar Scarlet) shot their view right to see Doctor Doom standing ten feet away, his arms folded across his chest looking directly at the regenerating Scarlet "A healing factor not born from mutation but by nanites, Doom may have to dissect this runt for research."

Viv rarely swore, and when she did she was usually quoting someone else but right now as the overwhelming sense dread filled her mind she muttered "Fuck."

"You're supposed to be at the cemetery." Arthur panicked, still holding Excalibur steady.

"Your allies at the graveyard were disappointing in combat but at least their distracted for the time being by the power bomb, they'll never deactivate it though, it will go off." Doom replied, remaining still.

"Power bomb?" Wasp uttered before realising "You're trying to create another purple rain incident, giving mammals super powers?"

"Correct Ms Van Dyne, you are sharp as your step mother. Although the original Wasp never looked so pathetically scared, your step mother is a true warrior, you sully the title of 'Wasp'." Doom taunted.

"The only way the powers can be spread are with the rift," Snowguard panted, wiping away the excess vomit from her mouth "so why are you just standing there and not stopping us?"

"Because that wolf is inadvertently speeding up the bomb being triggered." Doom chuckled, pointing at Arthur.

"I'm what!?" Arthur gasped.

"The bomb will trigger once the rift is at its peak energy level, normally it would happen naturally over a few hours but as you foolishly try to close it you're only concentrating all the rift energy into a smaller area. Once the rift is at its maximum energy output the bomb will explode and cover the skies of Zootopia, delivering powers to thousands of mammals and Doom will take the best for Latvaria's army." Doom explained, taking joy in the growing worry he could see on the hero's faces before adding "Once that bomb goes off, Doom will squish your heads like grapes."

"We won't let you do this!" Snowguard gritted her teeth, her body beginning to glow with the colours of the aurora borealis.

"Champions charge!" Viv boomed, making her body phase and zooming towards Doom, her attention was to take hold of his airway and make him lose consciousness through lack of oxygen but Doom reacted fast and sent a wave of green magical energy that hit Viv even in her phased state, she was knocked back into a storage shed before crashing to the floor leaving a synthezoid shaped dent in the shed. Wasp reduced her size and tried to get into his tech armour, hoping to sabotage it's inner working but as soon as she attempted to enter one of the creases of the armour she was blocked by a dark red glyph that threw her from the armour, her small form slamming into a discarded coffee mug shattering it.

Snowguard fired off a trio of borealis blasts that all hit Doom square in the chest, he grunted and groaned in pain as he was pushed back. "Magic works on him." Arthur realised as Snowguard powered up for more blasts but was stopped when Doom rushed forward and simply flicked her in the face, it looked like it shouldn't do any damage but with Doom's superior strength Snowguard was instantly floored and whining in pain.

Doom then laughed darkly as the still healing Scarlet rose to her feet and began throwing punches wildly in every directions, her eyes had not fully reformed yet but her tongue had "Come here you asshole!" she slurred, with blood and saliva dripping from her mouth, her lips were still growing back.

"Such tenacity, she's in so much agony but she fights on, Doom envies her resolve." The tyrant spoke directly towards Arthur, the wolf's eyes were locked on the villain but he daren't move, he had close this rift but he was racking his brain on how to do it quicker before the power bomb affected the entire city.

Doom lifted Scarlet by the scruff of the neck, the hybrid began to thrash wildly and screamed "Fight me properly you tin head jack-off!"

Doom ignored the insult and continued to speak to Arthur "Doom discarded you, thought you were useless but you are connected to the rifts and have the ability to manipulate their energies, how?"

"I don't know." Arthur answered honestly.

"Hmm, you're telling the truth." Doom mused, still holding onto Scarlet who was trying to wriggle free "Doom had intended to tear off this animal's limbs one by one until you told me the truth but seeing as you're being truthful." the armoured sorcerer tossed Scarlet like a ragdoll over his shoulder and over the edge of the railing, she managed to grab on but she couldn't pull herself up. She was too weak from her injuries and she was losing her grip.

"Robyn!" Arthur barked, before acting on impulse. He aimed the sword swiftly at Doom while still firing out the energy beam, Doom didn't expect the sudden movement and was struck right in the face by the beam, sending him flying a hundred feet back tearing through machinery and portacabins before Arthur dropped the sword and the beam died. Arthur darted over to Scarlet while yelling "Don't you dare let go, you've got a wife and son waiting for you!".

Scarlet was positive she wasn't going to let go, she just wasn't sure if her weakened muscles and bones in her arm wouldn't tear off and send the rest of her body plunging hundreds of feet below into Sahara square. Scarlet had never tested if she could heal after such a fall and she didn't want to try, luckily a pair of arms grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her back onto the metal platform. Her blue had regenerated just in time to see an terrified Arthur pulling her up "Thanks Knight." she smiled weakly.

"D-don't mention it." Arthur wheezed.

"Did you beat Doom?" Scarlet panted, her skin on her face finally restored and the fur started to grow back.

"I don't think so, probably just knocked him for six, c'mon we've got get Viv and the others on their feet." Arthur admitted, helping Scarlet stand up.

"Right...no...no,no,no!" Scarlet suddenly started crying manically looking at her left paw.

"What, what's wrong?" Arthur flapped.

"My wedding ring! It melted!" Scarlet wept, holding up her paw to show a messy lump of gold on her still regenerating finger, she slid it off with a snarl of pain and blubbered "I left my engagement ring in a jewellery box at home but I always take this with me, now it's ruined...Hannah."

Arthur sympathised but said rapidly "Scarlet, I'm sorry about your ring and your relationship troubles but we have to focu-" the wolf was cut off by being dragged away and pulled into the air by Doom.

"Knight!" Scarlet crowed, still too weak to super jump and help.

Doom looked different than he did twenty seconds before, his green robe was damaged and half of his helmet was gone, torn away by the blast from Excalibur leaving the a half exposed face of a man in his fifties with gritted teeth and murder in his exposed expression "Doom's armour was forged in the most mystical forges across the universe and tempered in the fires of hell, nothing can stop it repairing itself. Apart from your sword. Doom underestimated you, but no longer. Goodbye Arthur Knight." Doom then threw Arthur over the side of the weather control plant with Scarlet screaming after him.

Arthur was screaming at the top of his lungs as the ground got closer and closer, he had avoided death so many times but this seemed like the end to him, he stopped screaming and thought of home. Of his family and of a pretty lioness he held in his heart. He body shivered as the cold wind wrapped around him, any second he expected to feel a sudden surge of pain and then nothing. But nothing came, the wind stopped buffeting against him and the feeling of falling was gone "Am I...am I dead?" he asked aloud, peeking one eye open to see he was floating six feet off the ground.

"You better not be." A familiar cocky voice said to him.

Arthur looked up to see Mage hovering above him "Oh am I glad to see you!" he exclaimed as he floated gently to the ground with the help of Mage's spell "Doom's up there, he's knocked out the whole team but magic seems to hurt him!"

"Good, at least the bastard has a weakness." Mage said, still sounding unsure about his chances "You focus on closing the rift from down here, me and the legion of mechs will keep him busy and get the others to safety."

On cue a dozen or so Spitfire mechs flew up to weather control plant above them. Arthur landed safely on the ground but said with urgency "But if I keep on making the rift smaller the energy will be concentrated and that power bomb will go off."

"Brawn's come up with a plan to get rid of the bomb, trust him. Just close the purple cloud, we'll keep Doom off your back." Mage instructed before flying off to join the fight above.

Arthur sighed and thought of the sword, with a flash of light Excalibur appeared in his paw, glowing and ready to go. Arthur looked up at the massive tear in the sky once more and decided to trust in the heroes, he held up Excalibur and the beam of blue light shot forth towards the rift making it smaller yet more powerful.

000

"Ok I've got three ZPD units evacuating the old folks homes in the Rainforest district and my mech is helping the homeless in the area get to shelter." Judy informed, looking at the trio of holo screens in front of her. Two for commanding her ZPD officers and one the HUD for her Spitfire mech. Even though she had been apprehensive at first, she had picked up the skill rather quickly.

"I've got the victims of the car crash to the hospital, now I've got help Scarlet and her team." Alice huffed, she was sweating and munching on the snacks Jason provided while piloting her mech.

"Damn it, Clawhauser get officers over to Tapir street, we've got some idiots trying to loot the electronics store. Get them to safety first, then arrest them." Judy ordered into her radio.

"Um..." Jason sounded, looking at the floor of the observation deck and noticing something was off.

"Ok Jack and Lylla are driving the truck to the cemetery they've got Maiden, Beast and Ms Marvel protecting Kurt, Bella can you send a few mechs to shadow them?" Alice asked while reading the map with Maiden's tracker blipping on the big screen.

" **Understood, Yurei. Redirecting three of the legion as an escort."** Bella replied through the speakers.

"Uh, Chief Wilde, Alice..." Jason spoke a little louder but wasn't noticed.

"No, I need these homeless mammals somewhere safe put them in the ZPD offices if you have to, I'm not leaving them out here!" Judy spoke through her mech to a stuck up stoat officer.

"Guys!" Jason had to yell to get the bunnies to notice.

Alice knew Jason well enough now to know he wasn't the type of child to shout for no reason, she turned to him and asked calmly " _Oui?"_

"Did you just pee yourself?" Jason asked looking at the puddle on the floor under Alice's chair.

Both Judy and Alice took a sharp breath, each doe equally shocked as Alice asked in a shaky voice "Did my waters just break?"

"I...yeah, I think so." Judy gawped.

"No, it's too early, they're not due for another week." Alice rambled, taking her headset off and pulling on her ears with worry.

"It happens, I think me and my litter mates were a week early too." Judy tried to put a happy note on it to ease her daughter in-law's worries.

"Worse timing ever, kids." Alice breathed before wincing in pain.

"Are you having your babies now!?" Jason panicked.

"Y-yeah it looks that way." Alice hissed through the contraction before ordering "Bella take control of all mechs, stick to mission parameters and if you need further orders ask Spitfire."

" **Affirmative, Yurei. Should I inform Maiden that you have gone into labour?"** Bella asked back.

"No, don't tell any of the team. They have a mission to complete, these babies won't have a city to grow up in if this plan fails." Alice replied firmly, being helped out of her chair by Judy and Jason "Judy get me to the med bay, I'm going to need your help."

"Don't worry, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere." Judy soothed, guiding Alice out the door and down the stairs "I've helped with plenty of births, just never in a super hero secret base."

As she was helped down the steps she couldn't help but think of Luna, she had always envisioned her wife by her side when she gave birth, like a normal couple. But they weren't a normal couple, they were super heroes and the super villains didn't stop for babies being born.

(AN/ DUN DUN DUN! Alice is in labour! Doom is too op for the team! Will Jack get the truck to the cemetery? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Next time on TBM; It's a good old fashioned Robot and Car chase! Spitfire rallies the troops and Maiden gets pushed to her limit. Please Review and C YA SOON!)


	49. Cloud Of Darkness

(AN/ Hey folks it's Garouge/Crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror. Thank you for all the reviews, reblogs, faves, follows and likes on the last update so without further ado. Let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 48- Cloud of Darkness**

Lylla Mantlo had a reputation of being the most erratic driver in the Major Crimes Bureau, the otter was a speed demon who had be reprimanded by her superiors throughout her career for her lax understanding of traffic laws and property damage caused by her dangerous driving. But right now Lylla had a free pass to drive as crazy as she wanted and despite the dire situation facing Zootopia she was loving it "Damn I didn't think these trucks had this much power in them!" She smirked, turning a corner at high speed, nearly tipping the truck over.

"Damn it Mantlo, I told you to get us to Tundra Town quickly not to quickly to kill us!" Jack hissed, in the oversized passenger seat, gripping to the cushions for dear life.

"Oh come on Jack, the streets are never this empty, plus the city's at stake remember?" Lylla laughed off, increasing her speed.

"Ugh, why couldn't Rojek have driven?" Jack griped.

"Uh about that," Lylla branched awkwardly "he might have to make an arrest if we survive this."

"What do you mean?" Jack asked, still keeping his alert eyes on the road.

"You know that powered lynx, we think she might be responsible-" Lylla began to explain.

"Look out!" Jack shouted, pointing at abandoned car in the middle of the street.

Lylla swerved and avoided the car at the last second causing the occupants in the back of the truck to collectively yell in a disapproval. The small window between the driver's cab and back opened and frustrated Maiden snarled "What the hell, lady? We've got a sick mutant back here!"

"I'm sorry, ok, yeesh." Lylla dismissed, concentrating on driving again.

Maiden was able to squeeze through the gap and sat next to Jack "How far are we away from Tundra Town?"

"Another mile." Jack answered but suddenly his ears shot up, his sensitive rabbit ears picked up the sounds of jet engines approaching "There's something coming up behind us, sounds like a small aircraft."

"Of course." Maiden tutted, thinking this drive had been going way to easy "Ms Marvel we've got company!"

The polymorph had shrunk down to the size of a mouse and hopped onto Maiden's shoulder from the back "Doombots, great." Ms Marvel sighed "Can your arrows effect them?"

"My corrosive ones should do some damage plus I 'Borrowed' some of Andi's experimental arrowheads." Maiden assured, rolling down the window before saying to Lylla "Keep the truck steady."

"No promises." Lylla half joked as Maiden and Ms Marvel climbed out of the passenger window and onto the roof with the archer immediately firing a grapple arrow on to the roof so she would be magnetically tethered to the speeding vehicle.

Ms Marvel jumped off Maiden's shoulder and returned to her normal size, looking around the deserted streets and above them "I can hear them but I can't see them."

Maiden then quickly ran her gaze over the back alleys of the buildings they were passing by at high speed, for the brief moments where the alleys were in few she could see grey and green blurs following alongside them. Maiden then looked at the opposite side of the street and saw the same blurs in the alley "We've got three either side of us in the back alleys, trying to pincer us." Maiden said, drawing a corrosive arrow from her quiver.

"I'm not much good unless they get close." Ms Marvel replied, her eyes narrowing on the enemies.

"No problem you take of them if they get striking distance and I'll..." Maiden slowly responded, lining up her shot and letting her arrow fly at the perfect moment, the corrosive arrow burying itself in the side of a Doombot's head as it zipped by a dumpster "...pick them off from a distance."

"Nice." Ms Marvel couldn't help but smile at the skill of the shot, however the destruction of one of their kin prompted the other Doombots to halt the pincer strategy and go straight for the truck. Ms Marvel enlarged her fists as one zoomed right at her, she pounded it with a left hook and it slammed into a traffic light but quickly recovered was flying back at the truck.

Maiden sidestepped a vibration beam shot that left a clear dent in the roof before firing a corrosive arrow that only managed to the hit the arm of the bot that had fired the shot "Those vibration beams took out Spitfire's old mech, this truck's armour won't stand a chance if they keep hitting it with those beams." Maiden relayed, pulling out another arrow from her quiver.

"As if we weren't already against it. I always hated escort missions in videogames." Ms Marvel huffed doing a round house kick with a very stretched out and buffed up legs, cracking the visor of the Doombot's skull leaving it blind and sending it crashing into the ground "Four left to go!"

Suddenly one of the Doombots broke formation and went to the back door of the truck, a move that did not go unnoticed by Maiden "Oh no you don't!" She shouted while trying to level an arrow against the machine but she was caught off guard by a Doombot that had landed on the roof and punched her into Ms Marvel, which sent both heroines tumbling.

The Doombot trying to breach the back tore off one of the doors and was about to scramble inside but it was grabbed by a pair of big burly blue arms "My patient is trying to rest!" Beast snarled before using his gifted strength to twist the bot's head off and kicked the rest of it onto the street.

"H-Hank..." Nightcrawler spoke weakly, he was laid out on a makeshift of blankets in the back of the truck.

"Keep down Kurt, we won't let them take you again!" Beast rallied, ripping off his tweed blazer and white shirt, exposing his extremely muscular physique before daintily taking off his glasses and placing them on an equipment shelf just another Doombot tried to force his way into the truck.

Maiden was struggling to her feet when she he heard the clanking steps of the Doombot approaching, she reacted fast and grabbed what she thought was a corrosive arrow from her quiver before jabbing it into the crease of i's armoured torso. It's only when she let go of the arrow and saw the colour of the shaft did she realized she had selected the wrong type, she had picked up sonic arrow. But when the arrowhead let out its super high pitched wail the Doombot just stopped moving, it was still as a statue. "What the-?" Maiden uttered. As the truck entered the tunnel leading to Tundra town, Maiden poked the bot slightly with her bow and the machine fell off the truck's roof and clattered onto the tunnel's road "The sonic arrows paralyze them if they hit their innards." she realized while Beast threw another defeated Doombot out the back of the truck.

"Argh! I hate these things!" Ms Marvel barked, grabbing the final Doombot with her embiggened hand and slamming it into the tunnel's ceiling and running it through the brick work, completely trashing it before tossing it aside like a broken toy.

The truck emerged from the tunnel and Maiden peeked inside the driver's cab to thankfully see Jack and Lylla unscathed "We took care of the bots, Uncle Jack can you hear any more nearby?" she asked, her fur getting snow it from the flurries that covered the chilled town.

"No, nothing close." Jack replied, overwhelmed by the craziness of the situation.

"The cemetery is a couple of miles out, we'll be there in-" Lylla started to talk but a massive explosion rumbled through the district and a mass of purple smoke began to rise from the direction they were heading in. The purple mist was struck by lightning coming from the massive rift in the sky and smaller wisps of purple smoke began to shoot out from it.

Ms Marvel looked at the wondrous but terrifying sight and gasped "We're too late."

Maiden growled in anger before saying "We're not done yet, we can still get the bomb's gas container out of Zootopia before the entire city in swallowed up by the purple cloud."

000

The legion of old Spitfire mechs controlled by Bella stood no chance against Doom, the dictator was swatting them like flies every time they got close and it didn't matter if the attack was physical or magical the mechs were easily bested.

Scarlet had finally healed after herself inflicted inferno and was hobbling over to the edge, hoping by some miracle that Arthur had survived the fall but she didn't need to. The beam from Excalibur shot forth once more confirming he was still alive, which triggered a tired laugh from the heroine who was now hurrying over to The Champions to check if they were ok.

Doom saw the beam hitting the rift and grunted "The wolf lives?" blasting another legion mech before gliding over to the edge.

"Knight isn't the wolf you should be concerned with." Mage spoke with confidence, rising over the edge with paws already glimmering with golden glowing glyphs ready to unleash spells.

"The Mage." Doom said flatly, remembering reading the file that Ronin had compiled on the canine "Strange's student and lover of Professor Bloom."

"That's me, Clara would love to be here to personally kick your ass but she's busy tearing your Doombots to shreds on the other side of the city." Mage sassed while Scarlet tended to the Champions below.

"Doom wonders how your lady love would react if Doom adorned your pelt as a cloak." Doom bristled.

"You want to skin me just to hide the fact that your magic armour isn't self repairing like it should." Mage teased, motioning to very obvious damage to Doom's helmet "Doctor Strange told me about that armour, it's supposed to be impregnable but looking at you now I'd say you were duped."

"Silence. Doom will kill you, then Knight and then Bloom. Doom will be the wolf's bane!" Doom bellowed, irked by the sorcerer.

"Wolf's bane?" Mage sniggered "Is that your idea of trash talk?"

"Enough of this prattle!" Doom snapped, zooming forward at great speed but was knocked out of the air by a borealis blast from below, he landed with a thud atop the break room portacabin.

"He talks way too much." Snowguard hissed, her nose was bleeding and right cheek was bruised from her hit from Doom.

"Magic power team up time?" Mage smiled at Snowguard as he floated down to the platform.

"I guess." Snowguard replied, keeping her eyes on Doom who was slowly getting up.

Mage glanced over to Scarlet had managed to awaken Viv and Wasp and they were hobbling over to him "Arthur's alive, get down to him and protect the limey. Me and Amka will keep Doom busy." he instructed.

"But what about the power bomb?" Wasp winced in pain.

"We're going to get Nightcrawler to teleport to a different dimension before it explodes, as soon as the rift is closed get Arthur to safety." Mage added, getting out his trick cards.

"Right." Viv sounded, as she picked up Scarlet and flew over the edge and down towards the surface.

"Look sharp, he's up." Snowguard caught Mage's attention, Doom had risen and promptly jumped off the portacabin and was marching towards the heroes.

Mage through an entrapment card at Doom's feet, the demonic creature in the card emerged and tried to drag Doom into the enchanted prison but Doom reacted with a single powerful punch that made the huge demon yelp and retreated within the card "Well that's never happened before." Mage chuckled nervously.

"Your spells are mere parlour tricks compared to the might of Doom!" the villain boomed, waving his hand and making a dozen daggers appear and zip straight towards the heroes but Snowguard disintegrated them all with a blast of her mystical energy from the palm of her hand.

Doom then swiftly sent a wave of sub zero ice aimed at the two but Mage countered with a fire spell in the shape of a Dragon that melted the ice and shot towards Doom who dived for cover behind a metal storage crate.

Snowguard was about to ascend into the air and start an aerial barrage but a thundering boom from across the city caught her attention, the gargantuan plume of purple smoke rising from Tundra town only meant one thing "The bomb was triggered!?" she shrieked in alarm.

"Oh crap." Mage mumbled, his stomach sinking.

"Ha! Doom's plan has come to fruition, all of Zootopia's powered mammals shall be enslaved for the good of Latvaria!" Doom cheered triumphantly but there was one loose thread "Doom will butcher the two of you then crush Knight beneath my heel before he closes the rift."

"Over my dead body!" Mage yelled, charging up a powerful lightning spell.

"Oh Mage, that's the idea." Doom coaxed, his fists glowing with green curse magic.

000

Maiden had started a timer in the HUD of her domino mask soon after the power bomb was triggered; three minutes and eighteen seconds had past since the purple cloud had been reignited and wisps of power infected mists were shooting out across the city trying to find hosts. Ms Marvel had quickly noticed that the wisps were avoiding her, Beast and Nightcrawler most likely due to their already altered DNA. Maiden, Jack and Lylla were secure in the driver's cab of the truck with the windows rolled up, thankfully the wisps could not pass through physical barriers. "How many mammals do you think have got hit by these things?" Lylla questioned, her mind drawn to Rocket back in the Meadowlands.

"If they're obeying the mandatory curfew, hopefully not a lot. But we still have cops and other emergency workers on the streets." Maiden replied, keeping focused on her surroundings, the graveyard wasn't far now, less than a minute away.

"Looks like the Powered Mammal Division is going to be a lot busier." Jack grimaced, noticing the purple sky was giving the snow of Tundra town an eerie violet glow.

Maiden knocked on the roof of the driver's cab and yelled to the heroine still on the roof "Ms Marvel, you and Beast be ready to get Kurt into the cemetery."

"On it. Don't get out of the truck until we take care of the bomb." Ms Marvel replied with a shout.

The truck came to screeching halt as they arrived at the cemetery, nearly sending Ms Marvel flying off the roof. Lylla would've apologised if it weren't for the hellscape she was seeing; the graveyard was practically destroyed, most of the headstones were toppled, the surrounding walls had crumbled and all across the snowy ground was littered with the corpses of Doombots with the pire of purple smoke rising from a wrecked mausoleum adding to the hellish scene "Holy shit." the otter muttered.

Before another word was spoken, Ms Marvel had jumped off the roof and Beast had burst out of the back of the truck, carrying the semi conscious Nightcrawler. Ms Marvel was battle ready and expecting to be jumped by a Doombot at any second but as she entered the battleground her big brown eyes caught sight of Spitfire and Iron Heart taking out the last remaining stragglers of the Doombot squadron but there was the notable absence of Roar and Brawn, she skipped the hellos and asked with a shout "Where are the boys?"

"Roar and Brawn are in one of the mausoleums still standing, they have no protection from the bomb, our suits block out the mist." Iron Heart shouted back, the sound of the purple cloud whipping up was like a tornado "We got them in just before the bomb went off!"

Beast jogged towards Spitfire with Kurt in tow "Where's the bomb?" he asked loudly.

Spitfire pointed at the towering pyre of purple mist rising up into the sky, being struck by violet forks of lightning from the rift over and over "In the middle of that." she answered with dread.

"Oh my stars and garters..." Beast uttered.

"Hank l-let me down...I must stop Doom..." Nightcrawler implored.

"Kurt, you could die! Yes you could teleport the bomb out of here but there's no guarantee you have the energy to come back!" Beast fretted, easing Nightcralwer onto his feet.

"I will not a-allow Doom to enslave this city, the X Men help everyone, mutant or not. Just like the Professor taught us." Nightcrawler steeled himself, his yellow eyes focusing on the cloud in front of him.

"You...You best come back. Ororo has something to tell you." Beast said, fighting back his tears.

"Ororo." Nightcrawler repeated, envisioning his love's beautiful face gave him strength as he walked towards the ginormous plume while reciting a prayer in his native German "Gegrüßetseist du, Maria, voll der Gnade, der Herr istmit dir. Du bistgebenedeitunter den Frauen, und gebenedeitist die..." but as he passed into the purple cloud his voice was drowned out by the whirling wind that formed the mass of mist.

"Oh my gosh." Ms Marvel breathed, wishing with all her heart that this plan worked and Kurt would emerge unscathed.

"Come on, Nightcrawler." Iron Heart willed.

BAMF!

The loud popping sound could be heard over the wind and suddenly the pyre of purple clouds began to fade, the wisps disintegrated to nothing and howling winds stopped. As the sky over Tundra Town returned to its usual grey and overcast Spitfire cheered "He did it, he did it!"

"But where is he?" Iron Heart freaked.

"Kurt...old friend." Beast bowed his head and slumped his shoulders.

Roar and Brawn poked their heads out of a nearby tomb with the giant lion asking "Is it over?"

Ms Marvel was hit with a wave of sadness, she had idolized the X Men as a child, Nightcrawler was a legend to her, she had his action figure and wrote fanfiction about him. She turned to them ans mumbled "Yeah...but Nightcrawler, he-"

BAMF!

A puff of blackish purple smoke appeared ten feet in the air before Kurt's limp body fell from it and landed in the snow "Oww..." he groaned.

"Kurt!" Beast beamed, bounding over to his fellow mutant and sitting him up.

"I don't think I'll be able to teleport for a while." Nightcrawler panted.

From the entrance, Maiden, Jack and Lylla were jogging over with Ms Marvel instantly asking "Maiden, how long was the bomb active?"

"Four minutes, fifty eight seconds...but the damage could've been a lot worse." Maiden revealed, kneeling beside Nightcrawler and checking his pulse.

"How many mammals do you think the cloud hit?" Brawn asked with a worried tone.

"Dozens maybe hundreds." Jack answered regretfully.

"One problem at a time." Spitfire advised before pointing up at the rift on the other side of Zootopia "That's still a pain in our collective arse."

000

Wasp was the first to notice the sky returning to it's normal colour "Uh guys, I think Nightcrawler did it!" she yipped, she had been zipping around trying to avoid being hit by wisps for the last five minutes.

Scarlet looked over and saw the ginormous plume beginning to fade "Holy crap it worked!" she grinned, the wisps had passed by her and Arthur, most likely due to them already been affected by the cloud six months prior.

Viv who had been keeping a close eye on the battle on the weather control plant above them relayed "I think Doctor Doom has noticed as well." Doom's angry shouts could be heard even over the massive explosions of magic spells being cast.

Arthur was panting with sweat, partly from the heat of Sahara square and partly from the strain on his body from controlling the sword for so long, the rift was nearly closed, it was about a tenth of its original size now "The sword's telling me it's nearly done!" Arthur informed before going back to panting in a very canine manner.

Scarlet watched above her to see that Snowguard had transformed into a giant eagle that was swooping down at Doom while Mage threw all the binding spells he could at dooms, tethers of golden magical energy stopping him from soaring down and destroying Arthur "I don't know how long they can hold him, they keep on attacking but he just gets back up!"

"Excalibur please, I need you to close it quicker, my friends could get hurt!" Arthur begged the sword.

Viv quickly scanned Arthur and saw that the energy level in both the sword and the eurasian wolf was rising rapidly "Arthur, brace yourself." she cautioned.

"For wha-ARRRGH!" Arthur began to ask but was halted by his own scream, his fur and eyes suddenly glowed brighter with electric blue as energy coursed though his body. The beam from Excalibur stopped for a moment and a sphere of concentrated cosmic energy formed at the tip of the blade, growing larger and larger. Arthur let the sword guide his actions as he pulled the sword back before swiping at the air, letting the sphere go free. It flew like a rocket towards the rift and when it collided with the phenomenon there was an almighty rumble of thunder and a bright light that lit up the entire sky. A shockwave of air buffeted through the city, whipping up the sand around Arthur and the heroines, the wolf's glow faded and saw that the rift was gone, replaced with a clear blue Californian sky.

Everyone had a smile on their face for a second before a bellow of "FILTHY PEASANTS!" could be heard approaching; Doom had broke free of Mage and Snowguard's control and was zooming towards the team on the sand at high speed. Doom would kill Knight first, he would plunge his hands into the wolf's chest and tear through his ribcage and pull out his heart but the tyrant never got the chance before he could reach the ground a sling ring portal had formed around Scarlet and company's feet, dropping them to a new location. Doom crashed onto the sand just as the portal closed. Doom let a scream of rage escape his lips before looking back up at where he had escaped Mage and Snowguard only to find another sling ring portal closing. "You haven't won yet!" Doom snarled, rising to his feet.

Across in Tundra Town, a sling ring portal opened and Scarlet, Wasp and Arthur fell into a pile of snow while Viv floated down to the ground with poise. "I'll never get used to Kodi having magic." Scarlet moaned, picking herself up.

"Hey!" A happy cheer from Ms Marvel was heard before she wrapped her stretchy arms around the newly arrived heroes in a hug

"Oh man, did we win?" Scarlet asked, quickly hugging Ms Marvel back before going over to her fellow Ceartais members, who were gathered around Kurt who was now wrapped in blankets retrieved from the MCB truck.

"The rift is closed and the bomb is gone, it's over." Roar confirmed.

"Doom is still out there, this is far from over." Spitfire corrected before realising "Wait's where's Mage and Snowguard?"

"Probably still fighting Doom at the plant." Wasp answered.

"We need to get over there, I'll get my Mom and Alice to redirect all mechs there." Maiden said before speaking into her comm "Maiden to Bunker, do you copy?"

It was a few seconds before a flustered Judy replied over the channel " **Oh hey, sweetie."**

"Mom can you put Alice on the line? We have new orders for the legion." Maiden prompted, walking away from the main group of heroes so she could hear her step mother clearly and away from the other heroes chatting.

" **Can you ask Bella? Alice is, uh, kinda' busy right now."** Judy fibbed.

"Busy, where is she?" Maiden asked, knowing something wasn't right, she always knew when Judy was concealing something.

" **The bathroom, she's pregnant, she's got babies pressing on her bladder twenty four seven."** Judy replied way too quickly but then Alice's voice crying out in pain destroyed the lie.

"Was that Alice?!" Maiden gasped.

" **Um, she's constipated."** Judy lied unconvincingly.

"Mom you're scaring me, what's going on?" Maiden fretted, walking further and further into the snowy graveyard.

" **Ok don't freak out,"** Judy caved in " **but Alice has gone into labour."**

"What..." Maiden said, her mouth becoming very dry and amber eyes bulging with shock.

" **Don't worry I've got her into the bunker's med bay, I've helped deliver kits before, so this will be just like riding a bicycle."** Judy tried to alleviate her eldest girl's worries.

"I...I'll be right there, just tell Alice I'm on my-" Maiden never got to finish her sentence, a massive force lifted her up by her throat and slammed her into the snowy ground, winding her and causing her to drop her bow that when she was met by the battle scarred face of Doctor Doom.

Doom wasn't choking her, just holding her down. He wanted to kill everyone who killed his plan nice and slowly and then he would gather up the powered mammals once more and return to his universe. He grit his teeth and seethed "You've not bested Doom yet!"

(AN/ No spoilers for next week. Please review. C ya Soon)


	50. A cornered fox

(AN/ Hey Folks it's Garouge/crewefox here with another chapter of The Broken Mirror, as always thank you for your lovely reviews, reblogs, faves, follows and likes. Now without further ado let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Chapter 49- A Cornered Fox**

"I...I'll be right there, just tell Alice I'm on my-" Maiden never got to finish her sentence, a massive force lifted her up by her throat and she was met by the battle scarred face of Doctor Doom.

Doom wasn't choking her, just holding her. He wanted to kill everyone who killed his plan nice and slowly and then he would gather up the powered mammals once more and return to his universe. He grit his teeth and seethed "You've not bested Doom yet!"

Doom began to charge his free hand with a lightning spell that crackled just in front of Maiden's face but before it could singe a single strand of hair on her face Doom was forced off her by a blast of purple sparks propelling him into the trunk of a nearby pine tree.

Maiden quickly sat up and looked at her saviour; Sirius stood before, her eyes glowing green and her body shimmering with purple energy. Behind the costumed she-wolf a huge sling ring portal was lit up with the entire defensive unit from the MCB field office stepping through into the snow covered burial ground including Zoe and Esso (Who was now dressed in some sweat pants and a MCB hoodie). "I hate that third person crap he's always spouting." Sirius sassed, offering her paw to Maiden and helping her to her.

"Thanks for the save." Maiden replied quickly, but the news from the bunker was overriding the fear from the battle.

The blast from Sirius and the subsequent crash of Doom into the pine tree had caught the attention of the heroes still gathered around Kurt without a second thought Ms Marvel suggested with urgency "Beast take Nightcrawler and go with the agents, we can't let Doom get his hands on him."

"A wise course of action, Ms Marvel. I wish you all luck." Beast agreed picking up his friend and heading back to the truck with a jog.

"We'll take care of Kurt, you beat that asshole, you hear?" Jack said loudly to the heroes as he ran beside Beast.

Lylla lingered a second, sharing a look with Rocket, who had just exited the sling ring gateway before Mage glided through and closed it. Both looking at one another with warmth and worry. Neither of them were the original mammals they fell in love with but they couldn't deny the fire that had ignited between them almost instantly, they were terrified of that fire being snuffed out so soon but they had no choice. Lylla blew Rocket a kiss from across the cemetery before rushing to catch up with Jack, Beast and Kurt.

Rocket smiled for a moment and whispered "Catch you later, Lady." before returning his attention to Doom who was picking himself up.

The heroes hastily converged, making a semi circle around the battle hardened Doctor Doom. Everyone was prepared to fight, weapons were drawn, powers were being activated and the scrappers were ready to for a slug fest. Doom looked directly at Sirius and bristled "Bloom, an annoyance since you set foot on The Cauldron, now you return dressed as some cheap harlot."

"Told you your uniform sucks." Esso couldn't help but say.

Sirius ignored Esso and focused on the man who had imprisoned her and so many others "You're looking a little worse for wear Victor, maybe it's time to throw in the towel." she said confidently, hardly believing that she was offering mercy.

"You expect Doom to yield?" Doom scoffed.

"Well, duh." Scarlet mocked.

"This battle is nowhere near its end." Doom replied, crossing his arms and standing tall.

"Your power bomb is gone, the rift has been closed, most of your Doombots have been destroyed and we outnumber you nineteen to one. Surrender now, come back to our earth and we'll hand you over to the authorities." Ms Marvel stated the facts, she had done a quick head count and hoped she had included everyone.

"Excuse the poor analogy but nineteen lambs can't stop a lion from slaughtering them." Doom threw back.

"He's right that analogy was bad." Roar commented, nudging Spitfire beside him.

"Doom this is your last chance, give up. Snowguard and Mage were a match for you, even you can't take all of us on your own." Spitfire bolstered before charging up the laser eyes on her mech "Your choice is simple; stand down or get beat down."

"But Doom doesn't stand alone." Doom replied, Dragoness couldn't see his mouth through the damaged helmet but somehow she knew he was smiling and it made her shudder.

"We took out your Doombots! And even if you have more we can just smash like the hundreds before them." Zoe barked, she was sat on her doppleganger's shoulder.

"Doom was not referring to the robots, there is another army." Doom replied before whispering something.

Bullet tried to listen in but she had no idea what the language even was "Guys, he's saying something really quiet and really fast." she informed, flipping the safety off the alien rifle.

Spiderman's skin got goosebumps and his hair stood on end "My Spider sense is going haywire!" he added, getting into a fighting stance.

Scarlet's eyes were transfixed on Doom, waiting for any sudden movement so she could counter but the attack never came from the front. Scarlet felt something grip her right ankle, she looked down to see a skeletal hand wrapped around it, on instinct she extended her telescopic baton and struck the hand, causing the bones to shatter onto the snow "What the fuck was that!?" She yelped,

All of a sudden the crunch of snow and shifting of earth could be heard throughout the graveyard, as the heroes looked around in panic as monstrous figures began to claw their way out of the earth "Oh hell..." Mage gawped.

"Doctor Strange taught you well Mage, but there's a school of magic he would never teach you; necromancy." Doom taunted.

"Zombies!? First Doombots, now freaking zombies!?" Rocket growled, as the hundreds of corpses rose from their graves.

Spitfire assessed the situation rapidly and ordered "Me, Mage, Iron Heart, Sirius, Viv and Snowguard will take Doom, the rest deal with the skeletons." she them powered up her weapons.

The bodies of hundreds of mammals had now been ripped from their graves; most were skeletal some were halfway through decomposition, mammals of various species stood hunched, waiting for the orders from their dark master. An aura of dark green shimmered through their bodies with their eye sockets glowing the brightest, Doom had this contingency in mind when he chose this location as the place for his power bomb but he never thought it would come to this, he pointed at the heroes and bellowed "Beat them to a pulp and throw them at Doom's feet, for Latvaria!"

Horrific and tortured sounding howls, roars, bleats and cries came from the reanimated mammals as they scrambled forward at a high speed. "Champions Charge!" Ms Marvel war cried before growing thirty feet tall and slamming her foot down at the some of the zombies, crushing them.

"Oo-de-lally!" Spitfire shouted, jetting towards Doctor Doom with the most powerful heroes joining her.

Iron Heart was the first to reach Doom, hoping to hit his legs and cause him to tumble but at the last possible moment, he sidestepped her and brought down a heavy blow to her back, sending her face first into the snow and earth. Spitfire used her electro gauntlets and tried to use the increased momentum from her jet thrusters to uppercut him but Doom was too fast, he grabbed Spitfire the arm and threw her over his shoulder slamming her into the already downed Iron Heart. Snowguard had transformed into her hulking wolf form, complete with antlers, tackling Doom, he was pushed back but remained on his feet as he wrestled with mystic shapeshifter before forcing her to turn, making her a shield against the trio of projectile attacks from Viv, Sirius and Mage. When the tazer card, energy blast and gem laser all hit her Snowguard screamed out in pain before falling to the floor.

"Snowguard!" Mage yelled, feeling equal parts stupid and guilty.

"Focus, we need to take down Doom." Viv reminded, before flying forward for a close quarters attack.

Twenty feet away Roar was busy fighting the decaying remains of a zombie giraffe, Doom's magic had made all the corpses a lot stronger than they were when they were alive. Roar had snapped it's long neck but it just kept on coming at him, groaning and hissing and trying to punch the lion. "These things just won't go down!" Roar shouted over the carnage, kicking away an armadillo who was clawing at his feet.

"You never seen a zombie movie? Always go for the head!" Maiden advised, firing off arrows rapidly from her spot up a tree. The vixen knew she wouldn't be effective against Doom, so re-killing the dead was all she could do but realised she would run out of arrows quick "Bella, get one of the legion mechs to drop off six spare quivers!"

" **Understood, Maiden, they are en route."** Bella replied.

Roar took hold of the giraffe's husk of a skull and crushed it to a mess of flesh of bone "Why didn't you ask your Mom or Alice?" he asked, knowing it was odd to ask such a question during a battle.

"Ok don't freak out, because I'm trying my best not freak out but Alice has gone into labour." Maiden told, firing an explosive arrow at undead polar bear who was about to tear into Spiderman, covering the web head in guts and half decomposed fur.

"She's what?!" Roar exclaimed, punching a skeletal antelope and sending him hurtling over the cemetery walls.

"Shit timing, I know." Maiden replied, maintaining her focus and concentration.

Roar was not on the best of terms with Maiden but she was still his friend, he wanted to do something but she knew Maiden wouldn't leave her friends during a fight like this, but then an idea popped into his head and he said "Bella, contact Jasiri, tell her the situation and get her to go to the bunker, the streets are safe now!"

" **Affirmative Roar."** Bella answered.

"Why..." Maiden began to ask.

"I know you want to be there, I know Alice wants you beside her but I thought maybe her best friend being with her might make it a little less scary." Roar explained going back to thumping the hoard of zombies.

"Thank you, Kion." Maiden gave a small smile before returning to the fight.

Zoe had managed to activate one of the damaged Doombots and was using it to fight off the swarm of corpses that just kept on coming while Rocket was perched atop a tombstone and was mowing down with his laser machine gun on full auto, he was cackling "Come get some, numbskulls!" Wasp was doing the gross method of zipping into the partly decomposed bodies while small before exploding them from the inside as she grew back to her usual size, she had destroyed three corpses this way before being pounced on by skeletal cougar who had pinned to the floor and started slashing at her armour with its claws until it was stopped by a headshot from Dragoness' alien rifle. Brawn had picked up a toppled headstone and was using in to smash the skulls of any zombies that came his way whilst Ms Marvel was using her embiggened, boulder sized fists to beat the moaning dead back. Esso was scared beyond belief but that was fuelling her sonic screams that was reducing the bodies to pieces Spiderman was stood atop a statue of an reindeer angel using his webs to restrain any Zombies who got too close to his friends and not far away from him Bullet was stood atop a mausoleum shooting zombies as quick as she could with her corrosive shotgun she had smuggled back from the other universe while Scarlet beat down any corpse trying to climb the mausoleum and get at Bullet.

"This entire mission sucks total balls!" Scarlet vented between strikes with her baton "Parallel universes, killer robots, human versions of us, aliens, vampires, demons and now god damn zombies! Ugh, I'm so over this mission!"

"So seeing as there's a good chance we'll get our asses kicked in this fight, should we clear the air?" Bullet asked awkwardly while reloading shells into her shotgun.

"Are you serious? You want to talk about it now?" Scarlet asked in a frustrated manner, roundhouse kicking a goat's head clean off its shoulders, but extremely conscious that she wasn't wearing her wedding ring.

"We may die, I don't want to die knowing that you hate me!" Bullet justified, firing a shot that exploded a moose's head.

"I don't hate you, I'm just mad at you!" Scarlet replied through gritted teeth, having to jump up to strike a undead sun bear in the chops.

"Ok you're mad that I helped Alice put herself in danger, I'm really sorry!" Bullet pleaded as she continued firing.

"Ugh, yes I'm angry about that but that's not the main reason!" Scarlet barked, landing on a reanimated sheep before wailing on it with her fists "I'm Mad." PUNCH "Because." PUNCH "You." PUNCH "Didn't." PUNCH "Trust." PUNCH "Me!" Scarlet pulled her fists back to find the sheep's skull had caved in from her immense strength, before she was clawed by a zombie wolverine she jumped up to the roof of the mausoleum, stood next to Bullet and said harshly "You didn't trust me, you didn't have enough respect for me to even come to me about Alice's plan...that hurts the most."

"Princess I..." Bullet spoke but halted when she could smell Scarlet's tears, it was only then she realised how much she had hurt her wife, she quickly shot an opossum about to attack Scarlet before reaching out and wiping Scarlet's tears away "I'm sorry I hurt you, I know my words won't fix this but I want you to know I'll never deceive you again and I'll always trust you." she spoke passionately.

Scarlet's heart was fighting with her stubborn nature but love won out, she was still angry as hell with her wife but her feelings overrode that; she pulled down her mask and stepped forward, pulling Bullet into a brief but heartfelt kiss. The moment was ruined by screams of pain from Spiderman and Wasp who were being beaten down by the hoard, Scarlet steeled herself and got yet another stupid idea "We're losing, ok I need to go into 'Survival' mode if we're going to win this thing!" She said hastily "Shoot me in the head!"

"Wait, what?" Bullet reacted as the battle raged on around them.

"Trust me." Scarlet implored.

Bullet felt guilt tripped instantly but still got out one of the bladed pistols she had 'Borrowed' from SHIELD and aimed it at Scarlet's forehead "I love you." she said in a stressed voice.

"Love you to, blind badass." Scarlet replied, trying to be cool.

BANG! Bullet fired the shot and it pierced straight through Scarlet's brain, her lifeless body fell backwards into the ravaging hoard of zombies, they seemed to ignore her because she was 'Dead' but then a few seconds later a horrifying bunny cry echoed over the moans, hisses and snarls of the zombies and the enraged 'Survival' mode Scarlet began to tear through the undead in a berserker rage, literally ripping through bodies.

Arthur was using Excalibur to slice through the undead but he couldn't get the sword to activate the energy beam that injured Doom, he was begging the sword to listen but no answer came, the wolf had no choice but to continue killing the dead. Brawn was busy trying to get the injured Spiderman and Wasp into the marble tomb he and Roar had taken shelter when the power bomb exploded when he caught a glimpse of Doom on the other side of the graveyard; Doom had redirected Mage's spell back at him and Sirius knocking them down, the tyrant then grabbed Viv and before she could phase away Doom shot his hand forward, gripping her head and then with one quick twist he ripped her head off. "VIV!" Brawn screamed in horror, nearly dropping Wasp and Spiderman.

Ms Marvel had witnessed the scene too, Doom tossed Viv's head away and her body collapsed into the snow. Ms Marvel charged forward, smashing through Zombies to get to Viv's head "Please be like her dad, please be like her dad, please be like her dad!" the inhuman repeated over and over, hoping it was Viv's gemstone that powered her and kept her alive. Ms Marvel stretched her arm outward and scooped up the synthezoid's head before retreating up a tree, she held the head in front of her and yelled "Viv, please be ok!"

Viv blinked rapidly before saying in a crackly and distorted voice "I will be fine, my father can repair me when we return to our Earth. However the likelihood of us winning this battle is not in our favour."

Ms Marvel looked around at the carnage surrounding her, Esso was screaming all she could to protect a battered and bruised Rocket, Iron Heart's repulser beams were doing no damage to Doom and Spitfire was busy defending Sirius from zombies as she tried to get Mage to his feet. Things looked fire but she wasn't about to give up "We're not letting Doom ruin anymore lives, we're so close, we have to win." she rallied.

000

Alice was using the meditation skills her master had taught her to maintain her composure but her twisted expression, matted sweaty fur and rapid breathing were clear signs it wasn't working. She was sat upright in the med bay's medium sized mammal bed, she had quickly changed into one of the medical gowns stored away while Judy rushed around trying to set things up with Bella giving her instructions to where things were.

Jason felt incredibly awkward, he had learned about the basics of childbirth in school but he had no desire to witness it, however he didn't want to leave Alice alone either, the doe had took care and been nice to him ever since had escaped the Cauldron. "Um, Alice can I do anything?" he asked meekly, making sure to keep to the head end of the bed.

Alice stopped meditating and opened her eyes, she looked at Jason and gave a pained laugh "You're a sweet boy Jason, right now I just need you to do one thing."

"Anything." The Caracal replied, eager to help.

Alice used her right arm to reach to her left shoulder and disconnect her prosthetic arm before handing it off to Jason "Put my arm on that table over there."

"Uh, sure, but why take your robot arm off?" Jason asked back, taking the arm and placing it on a table with first aid equipment scattered atop of it.

"That arm has the comparative strength of a hippo, I don't want to squeeze someone's paw and break it." Alice explained before hissing again in pain and putting her remaining paw on her bump "Easy kids, I know your eager, just go easy on _mama."_

Judy was still in her police chief uniform but she had taken off her tie and rolled up her sleeves, she wheeled over a makeshift baby basket made out a laundry hamper and cushioned with blankets and pillows "Ok we've got enough blankets to keep the babies warm, scissors to cut the cords, got IV fluids if we need them and Bella's got a reading on each kit's vital signs." Judy listed pointing to the holo monitor to the side of the bed, each baby had a strong heartbeat and none looked like they were in distress.

"You really have done this before." Alice panted, feeling another contraction coming on.

"Believe it or not this is not the strangest situation where I've had to help with a birth, my sister Heather had one of her litters in a diner bathroom back in Bunnyburrow, we had to wrap the babies in dish cloths." Judy remembered before peeking down below and assessing "Ok you're dilatating quickly, I'd give it another five to ten minutes and we'll be getting you ready to push."

"Looking forward to it." Alice replied sarcastically before crying out in pain again, the pain passed and she breathed "I thought labour was supposed to take hours."

"Every pregnancy is different, one of my Mom's litters took her forty one hours to deliver and another twelve minutes. This is perfectly normal for it to be happening quickly" Judy assured, going to the head of the bed and giving her daughter in law a comforting hug and a kiss on her forehead.

Alice took warmth from the hug but it made her realise how much she wanted her wife with her "I really wanted Luna here for this." Alice sniffed, her golden eyes moist with tears.

"Hey, hey, I know it's not what you pictured but when she gets back to the Bunker she's going to be so happy when she sees you holding your children." Judy soothed.

" **Sorry to interrupt but someone has arrived in the bunker to provide emotional support."** Bella said over the speakers.

"Who?" Alice asked, breathing heavily.

"Alice!?" A frantic familiar voice shouted from down the hall.

"Who's that?" Jason asked a little bit startled.

Then through the doorway Jasiri bounded in, carrying two shopping bags and out of breath while little Mufasa casually jogged in after her "Holy crap, you really are having a baby?!" she freaked.

"Jasiri? What in the world are you doing here?" Alice asked caught between pain, joy and bafflement.

"Kion got Bella to call me and fill me in, that purple thing in the sky is gone but the streets are still empty so I grabbed all the baby clothes and diapers and junk that I bought for you guys and drove straight here but I couldn't find a sitter so I brought Mufasa with me." Jasiri answered at rapid speed before turning to Mufasa and asking "Honey, why don't you show this nice boy where the rec room is and play some videogames."

"Ok." Mufasa said brightly, grabbing the older boy by the arm and dragging him out of the med bay.

"But-" Jason started to protest.

"It's ok Jason, _Merci_ but go and relax now. Judy and Jasiri will look after me now." Alice eased.

Jason was actually grateful to be removed from the situation and smiled "Good luck, I'll see you when you're a mom."

When the boys had left the room Jasiri knelt next to her much shorter friend and held her paw while gushing "Girl, I can't believe this, you text me your test was negative and the moment you get back you're ready to pop. You look beautiful by the way."

"I really don't feel it." Alice growled through her pain, gripping Jasiri's paw tightly.

Judy took another look under Alice's gown and smiled with excitement "Ok I can see a head, you ready to push on your next contraction?"

"No but these kids won't wait for me." Alice panted, bracing herself.

000

Viv felt useless, right now she was just a sentient lump of circuits in a severed head being held by an injured Spiderman. Huddled inside a mausoleum with the unconscious Wasp, battered Rocket, a drained Esso who was exhausted from overusing her power, while Zoe was doing her best to patch up a nasty wound on Arthur's leg caused by the claws of a zombie grizzly bear.

Viv couldn't even be used as a weapon right now, she had first thought that Ms Marvel could hold aim her head and then use the laser from her gemstone to attack but it turned out her father had programmed her with a failsafe to ensure her survival in case of critical injury diverting all power from her weapons.

Outside the mausoleum shelter Brawn and Roar were acting as bouncers, trying their best to stop any of the raging undead from getting through but both brawlers were growing tired, this battle had been going on for over half an hour with piles of bones and bodies littering the snow but there was still well over a hundred corpses still standing and ready to serve their master. Scarlet had recovered from survival mode and had joined Bullet atop another tomb and was currently trying to get the swarm of zombie rodents off both of them but they were failing. Dragoness was about to swoop over and assist but her tail was grabbed by the decomposing trunk of a bull elephant before being brought brutally to the ground where more corpses awaited to beat her black and blue. Luna was still perched in the tree she had been in all battle with her spare quivers spaced around her on different branches by her count she had already fired over two hundred and fifty arrows, she had a few experimental ones left but she exhausted her supply of corrosive and explosive arrows while her sleeper and tazer arrows had zero effect on the skeletal enemies.

Ms Marvel had gone over to the join the fight against Doom once a well placed punch from the dictator had rendered Mage unconscious and Snowguard's werewolf form had been tied down with magical astral chains but her attempt to wrap Doom up within her stretched out arms was rendered a failure once the villain activated an electric field defence within his armour, shocking the inhuman to sleep and leaving her long raven hair frizzed. Iron Heart and Sirius tried to double up their projectile attacks with the she wolf firing forks of purple lightning and the engineer launching a continuous arc energy beam square at the villains chest, Doom was brought to his knees by this attack and cried out in pain. Spitfire was lining up her shot with her mech's laser eyes to end the fight when an undead badger swiped at Sirius' leg, causing the attack to stop for a second, but that was all the time Doom needed he bolted forward, took hold of Iron Heart and Sirius' heads and crashed them together, knocking both scientists out.

"You bastard!" Spitfire bawled in anger, fear and desperation. The mouse piloted her mech forward and gave a quintet of electro gauntlet punches before both arms were grabbed by Doctor Doom.

"All that passion, all that knowledge resides in such a small body but even with all your technology and the power of your allies you could not defeat the might of Victor Von Doom!" The Latvarian sorcerer snarled "And Doom wants to see your face when each of you filthy animals are skinned one by one, Doom will leave you till last so you can stew in your failure to protect your team and your city."

Spitfire charged her mech's lasers once more to shut Doom up but before she could fire them off Doom tugged on both arms of the mech, ripping them from its sockets, before crushing the head of the mech with one hand.

"Olivia!" Maiden screamed in horror as Doom continued to sever the mech from its limbs, tearing off its legs before tossing the torso the herd of reanimated soldiers.

"Bring Doom that mouse and her allies, make them kneel before the might of Latvaria!" Doom commanded with a wave of his hand the green magic surrounding the corpses became brighter, a pack of about twenty zombies began to rip into Spitfire's torso, trying to get at its pilot.

Maiden knew she couldn't get at the mech now, the zombies had swarmed at it, moaning and roaring as they did so. Maiden glanced over at the mausoleum where the injured Spiderman was propped up next to the knocked out Wasp hoping for some assistance but Roar and Brawn were trying their best to protect the injured but then she looked at Wasp and remembered a moment from the Manhattan safe house and hollered "Spiderman, Wasp's size disks, throw them to me!"

Spiderman didn't know what the vixen was planning but there was no time to argue, he scrambled the pouch off Wasp's belt, wrapped it in web before shooting at Maiden who caught with ease. She reached inside the pouch and selected a giant disk before using all her aiming skills to aim it at the metal of Spitfire's torso. The disc flew through the air, narrowly dodging the zombies clawing at it and in the blink of an eye the ruined mech grew fifty feet in size sending the dead flying off it. Maiden used her magnetic grapple arrow to reach the chest opening of the mech, while she was still zipping through the snowy air she commanded through her comm "Bella, open up Spitfire, emergency override code A7!"

Bella didn't respond with words but the mech's chest cavity began to open just as she landed on it, Maiden ran to the open cockpit to find a semi conscious Olivia inside, grown to over five foot tall, a deep cut from broken metal had torn into her right cheek with her right arm twisted and bleeding to add to the grimness her right shoulder also looked out of place "I got you Olivia, I've got you." Maiden said with a voice weighted with worry, she touched Olivia with one of the shrink disks to return her to her normal size before carefully picking her up out of the cockpit, the mouse howling in pain as she was lifted out by her best and oldest friend. But that was the moment Maiden realised she could only hear Olivia's cries of pain. There was no more gunfire from Bullet, Roar wasn't roaring, Scarlet couldn't be heard swearing and fighting and Brawn wasn't smashing. The dead were no longer moaning, mewing, howling or growling. It was silent, like a graveyard should be.

A shiver went down Maiden's back as she rose from the mech's chest cavity and she looked down at the cemetery, Doom had tethered and gagged the struggling Roar and Brawn with the same magic he had restrained Snowguard with, Scarlet and Bullet were both unconscious and were currently being dropped at Doom's feet while the zombies obediently gathered up all the other defeated heroes and dragged them before Doctor Doom.

Maiden gulped before using her magnetic tether to lower herself back to the snowy ground with the injured Olivia still in her left paw. "You fought valiantly but The Champions and your team of animal misfits are defeated." Doom cooed, watching Maiden walk over to where the restrained Roar lay and placing the wounded Olivia on his soft warm mane, the lion's eyes bulging with terror at Maiden, he knew in his heart she was about to something extremely foolish, he wanted to shout at her to flee but even his mouth wasn't gagged by astral chains he doubted the archer would listen.

"You haven't beat me yet." Maiden said in a shaky and scared voice, pulling out a tazer arrow from her quiver but before it could touch her bow string Doom motioned his hand and the bow was ripped from her paws with a magical force and thrown over the walls of the burial ground. Maiden then went to grab her wooden batons but Doom repeated the same action, pulling them from the loops on her belt and sending them into a snow drift on the other side of the graveyard.

"On Doom's earth foxes are seen as cowards by humans, running away from fear of being shot by a farmer's gun but not you." Doom insulted "You're scared but you don't flee, maybe you do share some of Andi's recklessness after all, even if you are unevolved vermin."

Maiden was stalling for time, she was praying for a miracle; for Mage to stir, for Iron Heart to aim a missile at the back of his head, for Arthur to hit him with Excalibur again and reduce Doom's armour to nothing. She looked at Doom, with his cloak and silver armour he looked almost mythical but the cracked part of his helmet exposing the scarred skin of his right cheek, eye and forehead broke that illusion "You think you're superior but you're a mammal, just like me, your species evolved, just like mine. There is nothing special about humans, you're just like each and every mammal here."

"You're trying to distract Doom in hopes of one of your allies recovering and saving you?" Doom called out.

"You got me," Maiden admitted before raising her paws and balling her fists and got into a fighting stance "but I'm not going to surrender."

"Fool." Doom simply replied as he stomped forward in the snow towards Maiden."

"My Nana used to have a saying 'A cornered fox is more dangerous than a charging wolf!'" Maiden rallied, running towards Doom and jumping up, with her claws ready to tear at the exposed skin but Doom grabbed her by the scruff in mid air, halting her attack.

Doom went to use a simple paralysis spell but Maiden hocked up a spit and hit it right in Doom's eye causing him to flinch, she took advantage of the distraction and reached for her quiver, grabbing an arrow and aiming to pierce Doom's eye with it. But she was too slow, Doom shot his hand up and crush the arrowhead in his hands before throwing Maiden to the ground with a bark of "Filthy creature!" Maiden began to scamper back in the snow but Doom loomed over her, trudging through the snow and he had lost his patience, he was going to skin her first. His voice boiled as he spoke "Foxes are sneaky, you wanted to be grabbed, you planned to spit in Doom's eye then stab it with an arrow but you failed, you missed your mark and now you will know only pain in your last miserable moments!"

Luna then stopped crawling away, she looked up at Doom with her mischievous amber eyes and smirked "I didn't miss."

Doom stopped for a moment, wondering why the vixen was smiling and what had he missed, he looked at the hand he crushed the arrowhead in and saw his glove stained in navy blue, he then felt his mouth beginning to salivate and his temperature rise despite the cold air. Maiden rose to her feet while smiling "You got a little something on your cheek there, Victor." pointing to the blue liquid dripping on his exposed cheek.

"What did-" Doom began before falling to the ground and starting to convulse. All the corpses lost their green glow and crumbled into the snow back to their natural dead state and the astral chains holding Brawn, Roar and Snowguard faded. Roar gently took hold of the weak Olivia as he kept a close eye on the fitting Doom, hardly believing Maiden had been the one to land the final blow on the villain.

"A little gift from Andi, you see remember that Night Howler you told her to steal, well she left a few arrows full of it stashed here in Zootopia." Maiden explained with a satisfied yet tired tone, walking away from Doom and over to where the unconscious Bullet lay and crouched down with her back towards the soon to be savage human "All that talk of superiority, how Doom is mighty but the fact is you're just a man, a mammal. We may be evolved but deep down we're still animals!"

Doom could no longer hear Maiden, he could no longer talk, he had no reason, no control but he did have the desire to kill, he charged forward on all fours wailing like a rabid creature with bulging eyes and a foaming mouth. Maiden expected the charge and turned around, firing one of Bullet's sleeper gel bullets at the cheek of the savage Doom with no magic field to protect it. Doom skidded in the snow, completely motionless, he was defeated.

Roar got to his feet, still holding Olivia and exclaimed "That was crazy shit you've ever pulled."

Maiden sat down in the snow and gave a very tired laugh "I just saved all our lives, don't I even get a thank you?"

Roar had to laugh at this, even though he knew he shouldn't and the hurt between them was still raw "You saved our asses, Luna, thank you."

"Oh god, Olivia!" Snowguard gasped, returning to her human form and seeing mangled right side of the rodent.

"We best contact the authorities, we need a lot of ambulances" Brawn winced, picking up Iron Heart in his arms.

Maiden was getting to her feet, ready to check Olivia over when she remembered out loud "Oh god, ALICE!"

(AN/And so it is done, Doom is FINALLY defeated. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review! Ok so we've only got 1 more chapter and the epilogue left, please stick around for the farewell to this trilogy. Please review and c ya soon...)


	51. Kits and Rifts

(AN/ We're so close to the end, don't worry I'm going to get sappy next update)

 **Chapter 50- Kits and Rifts.**

The last thing Mage remembered was Doom closing the distance before feeling a jarring uppercut under his jaw, knocking him out in an instant. He didn't know how long he had been unconscious before he began to drift back, he could feel the cold of the snowy ground under him and the throbbing of his jaw but he could also feel another type of pain, his cheeks were stinging and it was getting more frequent and more intense.

"Kodi, wake up!" Maiden's voice shrilled, the stinging pain continued to vex the stirring wolf.

"Wha-" Was all Mage managed to get out before being cut off by a slap in the face.

Maiden was crouched next to Mage's body, slapping him over and over in the face, trying to force him out of his slumber "Come on, wake the hell up!" Maiden yelled, her voice embodying all her anxiety and frustration.

"I'm awake." Mage groaned, grabbing Maiden's wrist before she could hit him again.

"I need you to make a portal thingey back to the bunker, now!" Maiden demanded.

"Wait, where's Doom?!" Mage suddenly remembered.

Maiden pointed over to the collapsed Doctor Doom who was having his powerful armour stripped off of him by Brawn while Snowguard was trying to wake up the other heroes up and Roar was calling the MCB while giving a fretting look to the injured Olivia in his other paw "I beat him, now get me to the bunker!" she insisted.

"Wait, you beat him? For real?" Mage gave a tired and pained smile.

Maiden had enough, she grabbed him by the collar and got in his face before growling "Open. The. Portal."

Mage didn't feel intimidated by his friend but he could detect her urgency, he outstretched his paw and used his sling ring. The portal made of orange sparks began to open up six feet away and before it was fully opened Maiden had already jumped through it, leaving a baffled and bruised Mage behind.

Maiden had dove through the portal and forward rolled into the main atrium of the bunker close to Mage's pickup truck. Maiden cursed herself briefly for not specifying that the portal should have opened up in the infirmary but she pushed down the annoyance of hindsight and began running towards the med bay, she was out of the atrium like a shot and nearly tripped racing down the stairs at such high speed, she didn't realise how loud she was wheezing until she sprinted by the gym, she was tired and her muscles hurt from the battle. She hated that she had left everyone, she wanted to look after Olivia until the ambulance arrived, she wanted to make sure her little sister was ok and she wanted to the absolute certainty that Doctor Doom was secure but Maiden wanted something else even more; to be with Alice and to meet her children.

She could see the med bay at the end of the hallway, the door was shut and she skidded to a stop when she had to fumble at the control panel to open the door but as soon as the automatic door opened and saw what scene lay within, she froze.

Jasiri was stood a few feet away from the bed with her phone out taking photos while crying and smiling, Judy also had her phone out and blubbering "Nick, they're the most beautiful things in the entire world."

Then there was Alice; exhausted, sweaty and still very much sore was wearing the most loving smile that Maiden had ever seen. Her golden eyes transfixed on the small bundles of fluff resting in her arms. Maiden was crushed that she had missed the birth but seeing her wife holding their children overrode any negative feelings. The sound of Maiden panting caught Alice's attention, she looked to the doorway and lovingly sighed " _Mon Amour."_

"Luna!?" Jasiri gasped, wiping away some of her tears and ignoring the fact that the archer's outfit was now pink "Wait, you're here? Did you guys win? Is Kion ok?"

"Yeah Doom's defeated, Kion's fine he's with the others." Luna replied but her voice made it sound like she was in a trance, she pressed the star broach under her hood and her bleeding edge mask dissolved back into nanites before going back into the star. She was slowly walking over to Alice's bedside, the vixen trying to burn this moment into her memory "Are they...are they ok? Are you ok?"

Before Alice could answer Judy had hung up the phone on Nick and sniffled "All five have healthy little heartbeats, their oxygen saturation is perfect and none have any injuries from the birth." Pointing to the holo screen with each baby's vital signs displayed.

"And I've just had some pain killers but never mind that, do you want to meet our kits?" Alice asked in a warm but tired voice.

Luna was already crying when she crouched down and kissed her beloved sweetly "I'm so sorry I wasn't here, you did so..."

"Hush now." Alice eased, nuzzling her cheek on Luna's and leaving her scent mark on her, reaffirming their love and their bond. "Now time for introductions; this little lady with these beautiful patches is the eldest; Victoria Olivia Wilde."

Luna looked once again at the babies, all snoozing and moving ever so slightly, dressed in matching white baby onesies and wrapped in makeshift blankets made out of towels, they all looked like little angels to the vixen. She carefully picked up the new born kit who had the white fur of her mother but was decorated with patches of black fur all over her face and ears, Victoria squirmed a little before settling in Luna's paw, which she was small enough to fit in. Luna brought her mother's namesake gently to her chest and said with a happy cry "Hey Victoria, I'm your Mom." she then planted the softest of kisses atop the tiny kit's head "Wait...Olivia's her middle name? I thought it was going to be Judy?"

"Blame your Mom for the change." Alice nodded at her mother-in-law.

"Luna, I'm honoured that you wanted to include mine and your Dad's names as the babies' middle names but with rabbit families, especially the Hopps, it's tradition to use friends as the inspiration for the kit's middle names because if every litter had middle names after family members it would be very confusing. So I suggested your best friend and seeing as she was close with your birth mother too, it seemed like a perfect name for little Victoria there." Judy explained, regaining some composure but still looked overjoyed.

"Oh Mom." Luna gushed "Thank you...and thank you for looking after Alice, you too Jasiri. I'm sure Olivia will be thrilled once she gets out of surgery."

"Wait, what?" Alice gasped.

"She'll be fine but her right arm and shoulder were fractured during the fight with Doom, anyway who's the next eldest?" Luna glossed over, too excited to meet her kits.

Jasiri smiled, went over and softly picked up a baby bunny with jet black fur before placing him in Luna's arms, snuggled up next to his litter mate "This beautiful boy is John Kion Wilde, ooh my kitten is going to be over the moon that Alice picked that name." she sang.

Luna fought back the awkwardness that this would cause, Jasiri didn't know about the rocky nature of her boyfriend's friendship with some members of Ceartais but Luna would worry about that later, she looked down at her son and her heart fluttered with joy "Hello John." was all could she say before reaching down and kissing his forehead.

Judy then picked up another kit, this one seemed like the runt of the litter being smaller than her litter mates, her fur was various shades of gold, as soon as she was placed down in Luna's arms she started to squirm and was on the cusp of crying until she latched onto the slumbering baby John. Alice then smiled "My little Sayame, she has the same fur colour as my master, except for the spots. I was thinking Jasiri would be a good middle for her."

"Really?" Jasiri whispered, her tail wagging with excitement.

"You were the first friend I made when I came to Zootopia, of course I want to have my daughter's middle name honour you...besides this way I can guarantee their auntie Jasiri will always be available for babysitting." Alice half joked.

"You try and stop me, I'm going to spoil these kits rotten." Jasiri yipped.

"She's so small, so perfect...Sayame." Luna wept with joy, planting a kiss on her middle child before looking at baby bunny with light brown fur but was certainly the biggest kit in the litter "Who's this little chunk?" she cooed.

Alice was able to place the baby boy in her wife's arms while explaining with a half smile, half grimace "Stuart here was the reason I spouted nearly thirty swear words in ten seconds but it was worth the pain, he's gorgeous."

Stuart gave a very adorable yawn in Luna's arms before nuzzling next to his litter mates, Luna kissed him before asking "What's his middle name?"

"Actually I'm going to keep the last two middle names a surprise until everyone gets back." Alice managed to sound mischievous despite being tired and aching.

"Fine keep your secrets," Luna brushed off, she was too happy at this moment and wanted to meet her youngest kit "and who's the youngest?"

The last bunny to be born had grey fur but much darker than Judy's and it seemed a lot fluffier than her siblings, Alice carefully positioned her youngest child in Luna's arms beside her brothers and sisters "I don't where Heather got that thick fur but it's so cute."

"Oh Alice she's beautiful, they're all beautiful." Luna sniffed, kissing her love again. These babies wouldn't fix their problems, there was still a lot to be repaired but in this one moment there was sheer bliss.

000

Even though this was a victory for Zootopia, the city was still in chaos. Hundreds of mammals were flooding into the hospitals displaying signs of powers, leaving the MCB scrambling to register everyone with powers however many of the bureau's higher ups knew that a large number of powered mammals would never come forward to be registered which would likely cause problems in the future. As soon as word reached Camelot about Doom's defeat the military lifted the quarantine and martial law rules covering Zootopia, multiple government agencies were now salvaging the wreckage of The Cauldron and smashed up Doombots for 'Research' all the while Mayor Nick Wilde was holding press conference after press conference to address the craziness of the last twelve hours which included; a spaceship crashing in Sahara Square, another purple sky incident, robots attacking an MCB office and sightings of strange looking mammals working with Team Ceartais.

It had been forty minutes since Doom had been beaten by Maiden and the cemetery in Tundra Town looked like the stuff of nightmares with corpses in varying stages of decay strewn in the snow, crumbled headstones and tombs and scrapped Doombots dotted around the place. Jack Savage and a swarm of MCB agents were now in the graveyard trying to contain this bizarre crime scene "Well this is going to a public relations nightmare, how are we going to identify these corpses and tell their loved ones they've been removed from their graves?" Jack asked, trying his best to ignore the foul stench.

"No idea, honestly we did not see Doom using zombies as a possibility." Zoe answered, the bat was messaging her Camelot team mates about what had transpired.

About ten feet away the heroes from both universes were huddled together looking somewhat uneasy at Mage who had a tarot card in his paw. "Are you sure that will hold him?" Brawn asked, now holding onto Viv's head.

"Don't worry, it'll hold him, Doom's frozen in time in here." Mage assured, holding up the card with a drawing portraying the scarred armour-less form of Victor Von Doom "Besides he's still infected with night howler, so he can't cast spells and now that his armour is gone he's got no defences."

"So what do we do with him?" Bullet asked in a tired voice.

"It isn't like we can hold him prisoner here, no matter how many charges he faces in Zootopia." Scarlet griped, frustrated the villain would not see justice for all the suffering he had caused the kidnapped mammals.

"He has to come back to our dimension." Wasp sighed "Too bad we can't keep him in that card forever."

"Why not? Keep Doctor Douche in there and he'll cause no trouble." Rocket suggested.

"Despite how promising that sounds we have to stick to the law, he'll have to be released and stand trial for what he has done." Dragoness burst Rocket's bubble "We've got him linked to every crime Andi, Ronin, Taskmaster and the others committed plus he ordered the assassination of Princess Shuri at the UN building, no amount of diplomatic protection will help him now. He's facing life in prison."

"So how do we keep him secure until then?" Ms Marvel asked, crossing her arms.

"We go to Doctor Strange, he'll be able to seal Doom's magic and create an inescapable cell." Snowguard answered, her face dotted with band aids covering up the scrapes from the battle.

"So is this it? Is this the end of the mission?" Spiderman asked, sounding forlorn.

"Oh come on, we won. Don't sound so depressed." Esso tried to cheer the costumed heroes up.

"Yeah, it's not like you're leaving right away." Arthur added, even though he had been distrusting of humans at first he did see The Champions as friends.

"Actually, we kinda' do." Iron Heart answered in a regretful tone.

"What? Why?" Roar asked, upset.

Even though Viv was a synthezoid it was still spooky to see her severed head talk "The time difference between our dimensions is vast, every minute we spend here results in much more time passing in our own world."

"So as soon as Beast and Nightcrawler return, we're all going home." Brawn concluded.

"Not all of us. I'm staying in Zootopia." Rocket declared.

"What!?" Iron Heart gasped.

"But what about The Guardians of The Galaxy?" Ms Marvel questioned, shocked by the bounty hunter.

"They'll be fine without me. Look I love those guys, they're my family but they all know that I'm messed up and the only reason that am I is because I lost my Lady Lylla. I know she isn't the original and I'm not hers but I've never been as happy as when I saw her face on that beach. We've already talked about it and she wants me to stay to, if I took her back to the other dimension it'd be too dangerous. I want to settle down and have a quiet life." Rocket answered honestly.

"Wow, there is a heart under all that layers of being a little bastard." Esso joked.

"Kiss my ass, cat." Rocket groused before handing Ms Marvel a flash drive "I've recorded a message for The Guardians, can you make sure they get it?"

"I promise." Ms Marvel replied with a smile, happy for the raccoon.

The sound of more emergency sirens was followed by the arrival of an armoured MCB truck and a black sports car that Team Ceartais immediately noticed as Skye's. The arctic vixen and Lylla emerged from the car while Aleks, Beast and Kurt got out of the truck. Jack went to approach Skye but she ignored him, she was focused on the heroes, she was marching towards them with a face like thunder.

"Yeesh, what did we do now?" Scarlet asked, wondering what had irked her mother-in-law.

Before anyone could offer a guess Skye reached into her blazer and pulled out a tranq pistol before anyone could react she fired it with the dart hitting Esso square in the chest. The lynx barely had time to register what had happened before collapsing into the snow.

"Whoa, what the hell!?" Sirius growled.

"She's ok, she's just sleeping." Rocket assured, crouching down next to the feline.

"Skye, what's the meaning of this?" Roar asked forcefully.

"Sabrina 'Esso' Reese is being arrested for the murder for two MCB agents." Skye answered bitterly, signalling Lylla to cuff the unconscious lynx "I couldn't risk her using her powers while we detained her."

"Murder? No, she helped us. She saved everyone on The Cauldron." Rocket protested.

"Rocket I'm sorry but we have body cam footage from the dead agents, Esso used her scream and split their heads open." Lylla informed sullenly, using specialised handcuffs that dampened powers.

"Foxy, tell me this isn't true." Zoe implored her husband.

"I'm sorry but it's all true." Aleks shook his head "I've seen the video, she did it."

"Don't be sorry, I just had to tell two families that their loved ones aren't coming home because of this little psycho." Skye stated, looking down at Esso with nothing but contempt.

"You can't do this, she's a hero." Sirius butted in.

"No she's an ex Drowned cultist with a history of drug use and petty crime and from what I hear from the other rescued mammals she killed someone else while on board that ship." Skye countered.

"He was blackmailing her." Sirius replied, close to tears as two MCB agents carried Esso off to the armoured truck.

"Yeah plus she helped save the city." Rocket bristled.

"It's still murder and she killed two MCB agents trying to help her after The Cauldron crashed." Skye said, not backing down "Saving lives doesn't dismiss the lives you take."

"But her good deeds will help her at the trial." Aleks tried to give Zoe, Rocket and Sirius hope.

"I'm going to get her the best lawyer and she's going to walk free, I promise you." Sirius told Skye.

"Good luck with that, Professor Bloom." Skye said coldly before looking to Ceartais "We'll debrief later, me and Jack still have to sort out this mess, oh and Bullet."

"Uh, yes?" Bullet responded, hating the fact that she sounded nervous.

"We need to have a long chat once the dust is settled." Skye promised in a stern voice before walking away towards her husband.

"Right..." Bullet replied, feeling intimidated by her mother's voice.

Beast and Kurt who had been quiet during the arrest stepped forward, with Beast opening the conversation "I would offer my congratulations but I am sorry for your friend's arrest."

"Esso is a good soul, I have faith she will get through this." Kurt offered his sympathy, the mutant was now dressed in an MCB hoodie and sweat pants and seemed a lot more awake that earlier.

"I'm just glad Doom has been thwarted, where is the fiend?" Beast asked.

"Right here." Mage held up the card before passing it to Snowguard "Get this to Strange."

"No problem." Snowguard nodded.

"I hate to rush everything but we should be getting home to our own world, I've taken some of Doom's portal tech from the apartment and rigged a device that will allow Kurt to open a rift home and once we're through all the rifts in Zootopia will shut down." Beast explained.

"Wait you're going now? Olivia's on her way to the hospital and Alice and Luna aren't even here to say goodbye." Scarlet whinged, she motioned to two rodent MCB medics tending to Olivia's wounds as she lay on a stretcher.

"Wait, where is Luna?" Arthur asked.

"Back at the bunker, she kept on slapping me until I opened a sling ring portal to it." Mage answered.

"Yeah she was pretty eager to meet her kits." Roar shrugged.

There was a stunned silence among the group for a moment until Scarlet gawped "What did you just say?"

Roar noticed how everyone was looking at him with shock and confusion "Uh, Alice went into labour during the battle, didn't I tell you guys that?" he replied, feeling two inches tall despite being the tallest mammal among them.

"No, you didn't!" Bullet exclaimed, hugging her tail.

"Oh my gosh she's having her babies now!?" Wasp reacted giddily.

"Oh come on we have to stay and meet the babies, please Big M can we stay just until we meet them?" Spiderman pleaded, he had grown fond of the white doe and wanted to make sure she was ok.

Ms Marvel sighed softly before looking at Beast and asking "We can stay for another half hour, right?"

"I don't think we have a choice." Beast chuckled.

"Ok, let's back to the bunker." Mage said, using his magic ring to open up a portal to the amazement of the MCB agents around them.

"Wait!" An angry Scottish voice halted the heroes, they all looked back to see Olivia pushing the MCB medics off of her "No way I am missing the goodbye or the birth of those wee ones."

"Miss, please you need urgent medical attention, your arm and shoulder are fractured." A female water vowel medic tried to ease the mouse back onto the stretcher.

"Look I'll go to the hospital as soon as I'm done." Olivia hissed in pain, barging past the medic.

"Are you sure ab-" Bullet began to ask.

"No time." Scarlet cut in, carefully picking up Olivia and rushing into the portal.

"I guess that answers my question." Bullet grumbled before following everyone through the portal which led to the corridor just outside the bunker's medical bay.

Scarlet took the lead and stepped forward, knocking on the door with her spare paw. A few seconds later the door opened and there was Luna in the doorway, changed back into her regular clothes, holding the newborns John and Victoria in her arms. While the others gasped and gave quiet "Awws." Luna looked down at Olivia in Scarlet's paw and asked critically "Why the hell aren't you in the ER?"

"Bollock me later, Ok...I just...oh my god they're beautiful." Olivia would've ranted but despite her pain she was mesmerized by the kits.

"Lu." Scarlet smiled, her eyes getting moist with tears.

"Come on in and meet them." Luna smiled back, walking back into the infirmary.

As the large group entered the room, a happy yip of "Dad!" caught Roar's attention. The titan lion turned to see Mufasa running towards him, Roar quickly shrunk back to his original form and out stretched his arms for a hug.

"Mufasa, oh kid I missed you so much." Kion hugged his son tightly, kissing him on the cheek.

"Welcome home, Kitten." Jasiri said sweetly, waiting for Mufasa's hug to end before embracing her lover and kissing him. Kion then pulled his family into a hug with tears forming in his eyes, he was finally home and he was never leaving.

Jason rushed to Arthur and fretted "Arthur, what happened to your leg?!" pointing to her torn and bloody jeans

"Easy Jason, it was just a little cut, Zoe's already patched me up, I'll be fine." Arthur assured before giving the caracal a reassuring hug "And it looks like you we're here to help Chief Wilde and Alice, your parents will be so proud."

Scarlet and Bullet had hurried to Alice's bedside, hugging and congratulating the doe while adoring the three babies in her arms. All the heroes were fawning over the kits but when Alice caught sight of Spiderman and Kamala cooing at the babies in Luna's arms she beckoned them over "Spiderman, Ms Marvel, can you come here for a second?"

"Alice, they're amazing." Spiderman complimented.

"Are you feeling ok? We didn't mean to barge in but we really wanted to see the babies before we left." Ms Marvel fussed.

"I'm ok but can you do me a favour, can you pick up this little girl with the grey fur and Spiderman can you pick the big boy with brown fur?" Alice smiled her request.

"We can hold them?" Spiderman nearly squeaked, he had hoped for this.

"Of course, go ahead." Alice confirmed and the two Champions gently picked up the kits.

"Aww she's so fluffy and small." Ms Marvel admired, her heart melting from the cuteness.

"Hey little bun, you're a lot bigger than your brother and sisters." Spiderman grinned under his mask.

"Their names are Stuart Miles and Heather Kamala." Alice grinned knowingly, handing off baby Sayame to an overjoyed Bullet.

Ms Marvel stiffened upon hearing the grey kit's middle name while Spiderman whispered excitement "His middle name is Miles? You named him after me?"

"You were always checking on me while I was carrying them, you brought me snacks and helped me with my little hunt. Plus this way when Stuart grows up and asks about his middle name I can tell him stories of Spiderman." Alice explained, Bullet and Scarlet had already taken Sayame to show the others

"Alice thank you, I'm honoured. Can I show off my namesake?" Spiderman asked, gently rocking the kit in his hands.

"Go for it." Alice replied and Spiderman was off like a shot to brag.

Once Spiderman was out of ear shot the tense Ms Marvel asked quietly "How did you know my name?"

"Remember when I pickpocketed your phone at Deadpool's office? I looked on your phone and found that all social media accounts were for Kamala Khan." Alice answered mischievously.

"But my phone was locked." Ms Marvel gawped.

"Oh please I was a master assassin, I know how to bypass simple phone security." Alice waved off "And don't worry your secret is safe, I don't intend to tell your teammates. I just wanted to honour a friend and the heroine who led a team that saved so many lives."

"Alice..." Ms Marvel sniffed, touched by the sentiment.

"I hope my daughter grows up to be as kind hearted and brave as you." Alice smiled as Ms Marvel raised the kit to her face and gently kissed it.

Across the room Dragoness looked quite content, she was leaning against the wall watching the heroes enjoy this moment of joy in an otherwise brutal day. "Hey." Zoe said, walking over to her doppelganger.

"Hey." Dragoness replied, still feeling weird that her voice was coming out of a bat.

"I uh, I hope you don't mind but I asked about you, more specifically your Aleks." Zoe branched into a difficult conversation.

"So now you know how I lost my husband and one of my wings." Dragoness sighed.

"I also know you have twins, like me. Why did you go along with this when you have children waiting at home?" Zoe asked, she didn't sound judgemental more curious.

"Closure I guess, but no more action for me. I'm being reassigned to desk duty for the rest of my career." Dragoness admitted.

Zoe then surprised the inhuman by flying up and hugging the winged woman "Just look after yourself ok? And your twins. Aleks wouldn't want you putting yourself at risk like this."

Dragoness hugged the flying fox back "Deal, as long as you look after your family to."

Over the next half hours, laughs were shared, hugs were infectious and many photos were taken but the time had come. Some of goodbyes were filled with tears and some were just friendly hugs or fist bumps. The Champions plus Dragoness assembled in front of Beast as he attached a mechanized device onto Kurt's wrist, the blue mutant concentrated his power and opened a rift of purple smoke in the centre of the med bay.

Ms Marvel approached the still injured Olivia, who was sat in Luna's paws having being doped up with pain killers and smiled "From one team leader to another, you got some great heroes on this team. Look after them."

"Don't worry I will, and you Champions keep each other safe." Olivia gave a slightly stoned smile.

"Oo-de-lally." Ms Marvel smiled at the mouse.

"Champions charge." Olivia responded.

With that the humans, mutants, inhumans and one synthezoid head went through the rift one by one all of them saying their farewells through tears and waves with Kurt being the last one to leave. The rift vanished with flash of light and a puff of purple smoke leaving only the sound of babies snoozing but despite the peaceful scene Team Ceartais now had to pick up the pieces of their shattered bonds.

(AN/ Please Review...next week on the final ever Take A Stand update it's christmas week in zootopia, time to heal some wounds, make a fresh start and try and move on while in the Marvel universe Ms Marvel has an annoucement and two foes get unexpected guests plus a few moew surprises. Please review and c ya soon...)


	52. Room for every star in the sky

(AN/ Ok this is it. The Final Take a Stand update, please stay until the end for a special message. So without further ado **,** for the final time, let's get cracking with this chapter...)

 **Epilogue- Room for every star in the sky**

Olivia Dawson was a nurse's worst nightmare, during her four day stay at Savannah Central General Hospital's orthopaedic ward she had given every nurse working in the department a major headache. She played heavy metal music at ridiculous volumes, ignored instructions about resting and literally dismantled her vitals monitoring machine and started playing with its circuits because she was bored. So as soon Olivia had her second surgery, a total shoulder replacement, following the plating of her right radial and ulna bones in her right arm the nurses put up little resistance when the mouse announced she was self-discharging herself. She just needed a hand to get dressed since her right arm was going to be in a sling for at least six weeks.

She had called her personal assistant Pua to organise a zuber to the Dawson tech building but had also contacted the members of Team Ceartais, including Kion, and messaged them that needed to attend a mandatory meeting at the bunker. By the time she had descended her special rodent sized elevator directly into the bunker's observation deck everyone was sat around the table, paying more attention to the kits that Alice and Luna had brought along. The first thing Olivia noticed was Hannah and Robyn and their body language, the two were known for sitting very close to one another and not being shy about public displays of affection but today there was a forced distance between them. Kion seemed expressionless, trying his best to hide his emotions, Olivia figured he was keeping things civil for the sake of the babies. Clara had noticed the tension in the group and was trying to brighten the mood by singing softly to baby Stuart who was nestled in her paw, Kodi just seemed anxious his eyes constantly looking between his team mates like he expected an argument to erupt any moment. Luna and Alice seemed to be acting the most normal, each of them were holding two kits each and doting on them but the smiles they shared and the gazes of love between the two suggested that their relationship was on the mend.

"I know I said the meeting was mandatory but I didn't expect you all to come." Olivia announced her arrival, skipping the hellos.

"Well, I wanted to see how well you were healing AND scorn you for checking yourself out of the hospital early." Luna said, sounding protective and judgemental in the same breath before cooing at Sayame and John in her arms "Your auntie Olivia is a silly mouse isn't she?"

"Seriously though, you ok Liv?" Robyn asked, noticing how thick the still healing scar was on the engineer's right cheek.

"Meh, I'm doped up on that much pain killers I can barely feel the pain, but I couldn't stand being cooped up in that hospital room anymore, but don't worry I'm going to be staying with my Daddies for a couple of weeks." Olivia assured, munching on a chocolate bar as per usual.

"At least there was no lasting damage, just make sure you focus on your recovery." Kion advised, still seeming stoic. Getting up and offering his paw as a platform Olivia before walking her over to the table.

"Oh I will be, I intend to do sweet F.A for a while...but anyway I didn't just call you here just to give you an update on my health. We need to sort out a few things but the first thing is disciplinary action for what happened at Deadpool's office." Olivia sighed, stepping off the lion's paw "Kion has already resigned from the team, Alice is on maternity leave so..."

"That leaves me and Kodi." Hannah said, sounding ashamed.

Olivia tried her best to keep her focus and not to rush over and comfort the striped hybrid, she pushed her emotions down and continued "I spoke with Kodi last night regarding this issue and we came to an agreement but Hannah, I'm sorry but I need to put you on six week suspension."

Hannah's ears went flat against her skull and she hugged her tail for comfort before meekly replying "I understand."

Robyn leaned over and took hold of Hannah's paw then said "Just think about it as adoption leave, this way you can spend more time with Aaron while he gets used to his new home."

Hannah felt her heart lift a little upon hearing the words and feeling the touch of her wife's hand "Thanks, Princess."

"I really don't want to ask but what's Kodi's punishment?" Clara cautiously asked, still holding Stuart.

Olivia tried to steel herself but her attempt failed, her eyes became watery as she answered "His punishment is that he's going to be having all the headaches, guilt, fear and stress of leading this team."

Everyone was silent for a moment, everyone looking to Kodi for a reaction but he was looking square at Olivia with a sympathetic gaze, Robyn was the first to break the silence "Uh, what?"

"I'm retiring from the hero life, just like Kion." Olivia confirmed, her vision becoming blurry from the tears "I spoke to Kodi last night about for about four hours but he's agreed to become team leader."

"Whoa, hold up, why are you quitting?" Kion asked, his tough façade crumbling and his expressions becoming saddened.

"I decided this back at the Manhattan Safehouse, I knew after we saved the mammals that I would be handing over control of the team, I intended it to be Luna but well...the whole Andi thing happened." Olivia explained.

"Olivia I had no idea, I'm so sorry." Luna sincerely apologised, her heart becoming heavy as she saw her best friend begin to cry.

"But what about Spitfire? You're our only heavy hitter since Roar's stepped down." Hannah fretted.

"I've programmed Bella to take the mantle of Spitfire, she's already an important member of the team and I trust her to keep Spitfire's legacy alive." Olivia answered.

" **It will be my honour, Olivia."** Bella responded over the speakers.

"So, that's it? You're just quitting?" Robyn reacted, struggling to imagine the team without the rambunctious Scottish mouse.

"I'll fund the team, provide you with tech and provide mission support from time to time but yes I'm never going in a mech again." Olivia made clear "And if you ever need me, I'm just an elevator ride away."

"Why Olivia?" Luna asked, trying to understand her oldest friend's choice.

"I just can't do it anymore. For years I was addicted to that mech but now I just look at it and think how much it has taken from me; a normal teenage life, more injuries than I can count, too many close calls with death." Olivia listed, pointing to her arm in the sling before adding with a small sob "And my relationship with Blake. I need to have a normal life."

"I get that but damn I never thought you'd retire." Kion let out a heavy sigh.

"It sucks that I join the team just as two members leave but you both need to do what right for you. But out of curiosity, why pick my bubby?" Clara queried.

"It was Alice who suggested Kodi lead the team, after Luna nominated him as second in command." Olivia spoke to Luna before looking at Kodi "We all joined Ceartais for different reasons, me and Luna were brought in by Marian and Robin, wanting us to be a better version of the MM gang. Kion joined to save his sister, Alice joined for redemption and for love but Kodi, Hannah and Robyn were something special. You three were trying to do the right thing from the get go, when I found you that night being cornered by The Razors you weren't there for vengeance or an outlet for rage, you were trying to get stolen medicine back to mammals who needed it."

"That night feels like a lifetime ago." Hannah remembered.

"I'll never forget the feeling of that machete in my chest." Robyn shuddered.

"Robyn, Hannah, I see you as little sisters and I love you. But you've made some bad calls over the years, sometimes your impulses get the best of you. Clara never would've been kidnapped by The Doombots if you didn't abandon your post." Olivia continued, still teary eyed "That's why I didn't pick you."

"Fair enough." Robyn accepted, seeing the logic but also she didn't want to be leader.

"Yeah, that makes sense." Hannah concurred but still felt the guilt and shame of letting the team down.

"Kodi loves this team, just like the rest of us but he's the moral compass out of all of us, he always considers the consequences of his actions and has put himself on the line to save both us and the citizens of Zootopia time and time again. So as my last action as team leader I want to call a vote; should Kodi Jones become the new leader of Team Ceartais? My vote is an aye by the way."

"Aye." Alice nodded, gently rocking the dozing kits in her arms.

"Aye." Luna responded, a little tearful.

"You'll be great Kodi, aye." Hannah voted.

"I don't want you to go Liv but if it's what you really want this, aye." Robyn reluctantly replied.

"Aye." Clara smiled at her boyfriend then quickly went back to doting on Stuart.

" **Aye."** Bella spoke up over the speakers.

Kion was silent and looked uncomfortable prompting Olivia to ask "And your vote, Kion?"

"The votes already passed and I'm not on the team anymore." Kion tried to appear defensive but it wasn't working, he was obviously upset.

"That doesn't matter, I want to know if you back me as leader." Kodi said in a reserved manner.

"...Aye." Kion said before getting up and hugging his friend "Good luck."

"Thanks big guy, it means a lot." Kodi replied, hugging Kion back.

"The ayes have it, Kodi is now team leader." Olivia sniffed, wiping away her tears with her left hand "Bella, give Kodi the top tier access to all protocols and instate him with all the powers of team leader."

" **Already done Olivia, Mage is now the team captain, congratulations Kodi."** Bella answered.

Kodi stood up and looked at his friends and spoke from his heart "I know the last mission was the toughest we've ever faced, all our lives we're change because of, for better or for worse. But we can't let what happen in the other world stop us from being friends, yeah things won't magically go back to the way they were but the ties that bind us are too strong to be broken by our mistakes. I hope with me being leader I can help us patch things up. But not today, it's Christmas Week, so let's enjoy the holidays and sort this out once we're sick of candy canes and egg nog."

"...I think...I think that's the best idea. Me and Hannah need to work through some stuff plus we officially adopt Aaron this afternoon, we want to focus on giving our little hero the perfect Christmas." Robyn accepted that a lot of Kodi's words were true, she also accepted that the trust between her and Hannah would be no quick fix.

"Me, Jasiri and Mufasa will be spending the holidays with my folks like always but I...I want to mend what's broken between us." Kion finally caved.

"Let's get the traditional Christmas trip to Bunnyburrow over with then we can start making things right." Alice spoke with hope.

Luna passed the kits she was holding to Robyn before going over to Olivia and offering her hand, the mouse stepped on her paw and she rose her up to her muzzle and asked "Are you sure this is what you want?"

"I'm sure, Luna. But this isn't the end of our friendship, I'll always be there for my best friend." Olivia promised, hugging and nuzzling Luna's cheek. Everyone then got up and took turns hugging Olivia, with Luna, Kion and Hannah being in tears as they realised their team leader for the last six years was no longer going to be there to guide them, only to be a friend.

Another half hour passed and the mammals began to disperse for their various commitments but before Olivia could head back up the elevator and order a zuber to her Dads' home she was whisked away by the sneaky paw of Mage who wanted to make sure the mouse would keep her word.

000

"This isn't fair, Kodi." Olivia seethed, her back to the wolf as she was stood on the pavement of a street in the Meadowlands's Pink Tail area looking up at an apartment building.

"You're right it's not fair but I'm just making sure you don't chicken out." Kodi smarmed, the wolf was stood just outside the border fence of the rodent neighbourhood, if a mammal his size stepped into there it would cause chaos.

"I literally just got out of hospital, made one of the toughest choices of my life, I haven't had a shower and I was crying my eyes out ten minutes ago and now you want me to do this." Olivia griped, her eyes locked on the apartment building's main door "You're a dick, you know that?"

"I think you mean 'A great friend'." Kodi replied cheekily.

"Come on, it's Christmas time, the season of goodwill and you want to put me through emotional turmoil?" Olivia whined, finally looking back up at Kodi who was casually leaning on the railing of the border fence.

"No I want you to face your problems, this is the thing you've been wanting to do forever. Now go up to that door, press the buzzer and go speak to Blake." Kodi instructed.

"I...I..." Olivia struggled, making a few cautious steps towards the building.

"Olivia?" A familiar voice asked that made Olivia tense up.

Olivia turned to her left to see Blake holding some grocery bags, the broad chested rat looked neatly groomed and was wearing a black t shirt with dark denim jeans, his facial expression was a concoction of surprise, worry and a little bit of hurt. Olivia wanted to reply politely but that fact that she had been caught off guard caused her to say "Oh shit...I mean, Blake hi."

Blake walked hastily over and set down his shopping bags all while saying "Oh my god, what happened to you, were you in an accident?" Blake was fussing over Olivia, observing her strapped up arm and the huge scabbed over cut on her face that would surely leave a scar but it felt too odd to touch her.

"Actually it was a crazy dude with a zombie army that caused it." Kodi answered coyly before adding "Ok, I'm going to bounce, Clara's been invited to my folks' place for dinner. Nice to see ya' again, Blake." he then sauntered off much to the annoyance of Olivia.

"Bye Kodi..." Blake replied awkwardly then quickly turned back to Olivia and queried "Zombie army?"

"Yeah." Olivia sighed her reply.

"Has this got anything to do with the purple sky and that aircraft crash in Sahara square a few days back?" Blake followed up, sounding slightly freaked out.

"Yeah, it's been a crazy." Olivia answered, shying away slightly.

"So, what's the damage?" Blake asked concerned, nodding at Olivia's sling.

"I had to have my ulna and radius plated and my entire shoulder had to be replaced." Olivia informed, the dulled pain from her injury was preferable to the awkwardness of this conversation "So I've got at least six months of physio to get through before I've got full use of my arm again."

"Olivia, I'm so sorry." Blake said honestly before reaching out and touching her chin lightly, turning the right side of her face so he could see the injury, Olivia daren't make eye contact while he gazed at her face. She expected another sympathetic comment but instead heard Blake chuckled "We match." while taking his paw back and pointing at his deep scar that covered most of his cheek and neck.

"I guess we do." Olivia gave a glum smile before regaining her courage "Listen Blake, I need to tell you a few things, there's some stuff I've been holding on to and it's eating me up inside."

"Right," Blake responded, his mood shifting yet again, this time to sullen "do you want to come inside and talk about it?"

"No, no. I just need to say this and I'll leave you in peace." Olivia stood firm, taking a breather before branching to "I was a terrible girlfriend to you."

"Olivia-" Blake started to try and comfort his ex.

"Please, Blake." Olivia halted then continued "At the start of our relationship I lied to you a lot then after what happened with Rattigan I thought we would be happy, but I kept on making things unhappy for us. I'd ditch you to do missions that the team they could've easily handled without me, you'd try and cheer me up after a rough day and I'd push you away, whenever I got stressed with hero work or a new mech I'd take it out on you. I forgot your birthday, twice. I forgot our anniversary three times and on one Valentine's day I stood you up at that Chinese restaurant because I was chasing that idiot TNTiger. No wonder you asked me to limit my time as Spitfire."

"That was unfair of me." Blake had to point out "I've always respected what you've done for this city, you being a hero was important to you and you've saved so many people. I guess I was just selfish, I wanted you but Zootopia needed you."

"It's not selfish to want a healthy relationship." Olivia countered "Besides, you're probably better off without me, I bet you've got yourself someone who'll treat you right."

"There's no one." Blake admitted "I tried going on a few dates since we broke up but they never went anywhere, my mind was still on you. It still is, kind of."

"Same here, I've been with no one since you." Olivia confided "But I've burnt my bridge with you and in the end it wasn't even worth the heartache."

"What do you mean?" Blake asked, finally noticing Olivia's puffy eyes, indicating that she had been crying.

"I'm not Spitfire anymore, I just handed the mech to someone else." Olivia answered, in pain from both her shoulder and her emotions "I just couldn't do it anymore, this last two weeks put a lot of things in perspective, that suit took so much from me. I had to hand it off before it took my life to."

"Wait, so that's it? You quit?" Blake asked with a gawp, stunned by the words.

"I'll fund the team and build them tech but yeah I quit." Olivia clarified before giving a sad laugh "We broke up because I couldn't leave the suit behind, I put us through emotional hell and a year later I quit anyway, ain't life a bitch?"

Blake was silent, trying to come to terms with what he had just been told. Olivia didn't know if the rat was mad or sad either way she wanted to exit the conversation before any more feelings could be hurt "Well, that's all I wanted to say; I'm sorry for being the world's worst girlfriend. And, uh sorry for ruining your day, you went to get some groceries and get awkwardness and angst as a shitty bonus. But hey maybe this will give you closure now and you can find a nice girl." Olivia babbled out of nerves, edging more and more away, keeping an eye out for a taxi on the street but there was none to be seen.

"Wait." Blake said quietly "...I don't want this."

"Don't want what?" Olivia asked back.

"I don't want this to be the last time we talk, for the last year I've been miserable without you and then you abruptly say the bridges are completely burnt between us, do you really feel that way?" Blake asked, frustrated.

"I messed up our relationship, there's nothing than change that." Olivia answered, turning away from Blake.

"Do you still love me?" Blake asked, his voice strained by his conflicting emotions. "Yes or no?"

Olivia couldn't bear to show Blake her now tearful face but she couldn't deny her feelings either "Yes, I still love you."

"And I love you, even after a year of not seeing you." Blake concurred, walking over and gently turning Olivia around so he could look her in the face "I'm not saying things will be fixed for us instantly if we get back together but I want to be with you Olivia, so whatever we have to do to make it work, I'm willing to do it. We'll take it slow, we'll actually talk to each other about how we feel, I want us to be us again."

Olivia's head was in maelstrom, she felt fear, joy, nerves and a little bit of a buzz from all the pain killers she was on but none of that stopped her saying "I want that too."

000

Arthur didn't know what to expect upon seeing Robyn and Hannah's home but he hadn't anticipated it being so welcoming and homely, the small Sherwood suburban home looked like he hadn't changed since it was built in the 1950s. The majority of the furniture and appliances looked retro but well maintained, the only thing that looked out of place was the young occupants. Arthur thought it best not to talk about the Wilde-Savage's décor while he sat at the kitchen table supping the fresh cup of tea that Robyn has just poured.

"So is this really your son's first day here?" The blue furred wolf asked.

"He's had sleep overs before but yeah this is Aaron's first day as an official Wilde-Savage." Robyn smiled, hearing the happy voices of Hannah and Aaron upstairs as they unpacked his stuff.

"I really shouldn't be imposing on such an important day." Arthur replied, feeling a tad guilty.

"Don't be stupid, it was us who invited you." Robyn corrected.

"Why did you invite me?" Arthur had to ask.

Robyn got up from the kitchen table and went to a cupboard and pulled out an item wrapped in blue cloth then placed it in front of Arthur "Take a look." she invited.

Arthur unwrapped the cloth to find a shoulder pauldron very similar to the one Riri had made for him in the other dimension, it had the Knight family crest on it but it had the addition of the Star of Ceartais behind it.

"We want you on the team, Knight, you've got a gift and we wouldn't have been able to save Zootopia without you." Robyn smiled "You'll need training and I mean a lot of training to get you mission ready but we think you're up to it."

Arthur looked at the pauldron and his shoulders slumped, he looked up at Robyn with a reserved expression "I want to Robyn, but I can't. Not yet. There's some stuff I need to take care of back in England, I've left things unanswered for far too long."

Robyn let out a hearty sigh then said "Hannah thought as much, she said you'd go home."

"I'll come back and when I do I'll consider your offer, but right now I need to figure out my powers." Arthur explained, handing the pauldron back to Robyn "I have a flight to Heathrow this evening."

"Well the offer will always be open." Robyn assured, wrapping up the armour piece back in it's cloth.

"I do have a favour though." Arthur brought up.

"Sure, watcha' need?" Robyn asked, putting the pauldron back in the cupboard.

Arthur's fur shimmered a brighter blue for a second and without warning Excalibur appeared, laying flat across the kitchen table "I need you to take this and put it in your bunker."

Robyn looked at Arthur with confusion "Won't you need it? I mean I thought you were trying to find the source of your power, that sword has something to do with it."

"I'm sure it does but I don't want it anywhere near me when I go home, I know it's hard to grasp but please do this for me." Arthur requested.

"Ok, whatever, I doubt you'd get through airport security anyway." Robyn jested as the sound of footsteps came down the stairs.

Aaron and Hannah walked into the room with the little koala's eyes focusing immediately on the magic sword "Wow! So cool!" he beamed, rushing over to touch it.

Robyn scooped up her son before he could get anywhere near it and playfully warned "Oh no you don't, I don't want you chopping your paws off before we head to Bunnyburrow in a couple of days."

"But Mom, it's magic." Aaron moaned.

"Listen to your Mom, how will you be able to hold your little cousins if you have no paws?" Hannah backed up Robyn but Arthur noticed something in the striped hybrid's paws, something that called to him.

"Is that what I think it is?" Arthur asked, pointing to the book in Hannah's paws.

Hannah sensed Arthur's movements and confirmed "The Book of Seren, I believe this belongs to you."

Hannah passed Arthur the book causing both him and Excalibur to shimmer blue for a moment, he ran his paw over the old tome before smiling at Aaron "Thanks for looking after this and I'm sorry for shouting at you last time."

"No worries, just listen to the book when it talks to you." Aaron answered cryptically leaving all the adults in the room puzzled.

000

Things were going well at the Jones mansion, so well in fact that it made Kodi nervous that he would make some faux pas to ruin the pleasant meeting of Clara and his family. The Jones' were a family who went all out for Christmas, the entire mansion was decked out with decorations, there were even Santa Claus figurines in the bathrooms. The main Christmas party would begin on the 24th with the majority of Gazelle's family from Columbia flying in for the celebrations while Wade's family only had a short drive from the neighbouring districts of Zootopia. But for tonight it was a mini Christmas party seeing as Clara had to fly back to New York early the next morning to spend the first night of Hanukkah with her family but that didn't stop Gazelle insisting that everyone wear ugly holiday sweaters during the warm Californian afternoon.

Kodi grabbed himself a beer from the huge dining room's bar and looked on with unwarranted worry as he saw his parents happily chatting with his girlfriend at the table, having finished their meal and now enjoying some mulled wine. "Will you stop acting like such a wet blanket?" Sasha mumbled to him, grabbing herself some of the mulled wine from the pot.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Kodi asked back, the wolf was wearing a gaudy Christmas sweater with a Snow Wolf on it with the words 'I'm sexy and I snow it'.

"I dunno', probably comparing notes on how you're a terrible mammal with zero morals." The Antelope teased her older brother, she had her usual camera strapped around her neck that covered up her light up Christmas tree sweater.

"Thanks." Kodi reacted dryly, supping his beer.

"Will you relax? Mom and Dad love Clara, I love Clara and got a feeling my player of a big brother loves her too." Sasha cooed, playfully poking Kodi in the gut.

"...I do actually." Kodi confirmed with a smile.

Sasha nearly choked on the wine she was drinking and whispered "Did you just say the L word?"

"Yeah I did, I love her." Kodi answered, catching Clara's eye as she looked over, she just smiled before returning her attention to Wade who was telling a story.

"Kodi." Sasha gushed, genuinely happy to hear the words "But you've only been dating for what? A few days?"

"A lot of stuff and lot more time passed during the last mission. To put it bluntly you saw me only six days ago back at your college but I haven't seen you in over a year. I'm actually 22 now not 21." Kodi informed.

Sasha knew this sounded ridiculous but she believed him "Ok you need to explain everything about your last mission to me later." she said walking back over to the dining table with Kodi following.

As the Jones siblings arrived back at the table Wade was finishing his story "...So Kodi and Hannah try and run a yard sale outside the mansion to raise money for their class field trip. And what does Kodi decide to sell? One of Gazelle's grammys."

"No." Clara gasped with a grin, nearly spilling wine on her blue Hannukah sweater with a Menorah knitted into the design and the words 'Let's get lit.'

"Yeah it took me weeks to find that award and buy it back." Gazelle chuckled "My mijo felt so guilty about it."

"I was nine." Kodi clarified with a moan.

"And even though you're older now, you're still our dorky pup." Wade grinned, enjoying embarrassing his eldest child but then he sniffed the air and realised "Crap, I've burnt the brownies." setting down his wine and rushing to the kitchen.

"I'll get the fire extinguisher, again." Gazelle sighed, following her husband.

"And I'm going to photograph another one of Dad's baking disasters." Sasha grinned, trotting out of the room.

Kodi sat down beside Clara and asked "So are you over being starstruck by my Mom yet?"

"It's like 80% I'm cool, the other 20% of me is just fangirling." Clara answered before adding "Your parents are so nice and Sasha is such a sweetheart but you Mr Jones are the pick of the bunch." Clara then nuzzled into Kodi's neck.

"I'm going to miss you over the holidays." Kodi said, savouring the feel of Clara's muzzle stroking his.

"I'll miss you too, but I'll be back in just over a week. Besides you've got all your family flying in, you'll have a great time and I'll have an awesome time back in Brooklyn with my family." Clara assured "Anyway at least I can brag that I have a sweet, caring and roguishly handsome boyfriend waiting for me back home in Zootopia."

"Well let's see what dates Hannukah falls on next year and I'll join you and you can come here for Christmas." Kodi hoped aloud.

Clara pulled back and smiled at Kodi "Look at you wanting to meeting the rest of the Blooms, where has that player gone?"

"Long gone." Kodi replied before looking a little trepidatious and saying "Actually on the whole meeting your family thing, I kinda' had an idea, but it's cool if you think it's too soon."

"Go on." Clara prompted, curious.

"What if you stay with your folks for a few more days, until new years? I've heard new year's eve in New York is something special and y' know maybe I could make a portal and join you for the celebrations and well, meet your family." Kodi suggested, hoping that he didn't sound pushy or imposing.

Clara's heart fluttered but she didn't show she was swooning from the suggestion, she played it cool and aimed a very small energy blast at the decorations above them and a sprig of mistletoe landed on Kodi's head. Clara leaned in and whispered "I'd love that." before kissing Kodi softly.

000

Ms Marvel was looking at herself in the bathroom mirror of the mobile bunker, trying to psyche herself up for what she was about to do. It had been three weeks since she and the other Champions arrived back in their home dimension. After a telling off from her parents for disappearing, a few fake stories plus doctored photos involving a Stark Internship to make a convincing cover story (Thanks to Riri) Kamala Khan set to work. She checked up on Nightcrawler, who was now resting and recovering at the Xavier Academy but the inhuman did note that Kurt and Storm were holding hands throughout her visit, giving Ms Marvel hope that the two had finally realised what a good match they were. Ms Marvel also made a visit to the Sanctum Sanctorum where Doctor Strange and Snowguard were busy preparing magical defences for Doom's cell while Riri and Moon Girl worked on the engineering side of things. Ms Marvel then had to use Thor to get a hold of Groot, who was busy stopping illegal logging in the amazon, so he could call the remainder of The Guardians of The Galaxy to earth to reveal Rocket's decision. The revelation about Rocket staying Zootopia caused a range of emotions both Groot and Mantis cried, Gamora was more worried for her friend's wellbeing, Star Lord seemed frustrated by the bounty hunter's action but seemed to calm down when it was revealed that Rocket had left his entire bounty hunting fortune to be distributed equally among the Guardians but Drax just smiled contently upon hearing about Rocket's choice to stay with Lylla in Zootopia. But the entire 'Missing Mammals' mission had made Ms Marvel realise something, The Champions were too few, while they were busy helping Team Ceartais they had put their other responsibilities on the back burner. She had proposed potential new members to her team mates and over the last few days they discussed who were the best fits for the team before sending out the invites. Now it was time to meet them.

Ms Marvel stepped out of the bathroom and wandered down the hall to see Spiderman and Viv (With a fully repaired body) waiting for her by the cargo bay doors of the aircraft "They here?" Ms Marvel asked with a little anxiety.

"They're waiting outside, all ready to meet their new leader." Spiderman answered.

"How many showed up?" Ms Marvel followed up.

"All eight potential recruits accepted the invitation." Viv answered.

"Oh my gosh, I didn't think all of them would come." Ms Marvel stressed.

"Come on Big M, this was your idea." Spiderman encouraged.

"Me, Miles and the other Champions will be there to help you train and guide them." Viv comforted.

"Ugh, to heck with it. Open the door, I can't stall all day with my nerves." Ms Marvel rallied herself.

Spiderman pressed the button and the cargo doors began to lower down revealing the sunny day in Manhattan's central park, Ms Marvel saw the other Champions talking to the potential recruits but as soon as they caught a glimpse of the Jersey City heroine everyone stopped chatting and almost stood to attention. Ms Marvel didn't realise how much respect she commanded but her noble deeds had made the most famous of the Champions and was a role model for heroes both young and old.

Ms Marvel was doing her upmost to maintain an aura of confidence as she looked to each of the recruits, both familiar and some unknown to her, the easiest to spot was Moon Girl, the eleven year old genius was kitted out in her home made costume and was sat atop the head of the massive Devil Dinosaur, who was taking a nap on the grass. There was a tall and slim black teen, wearing colours reminiscent of Captain America and holding a modified shield, which seemed fitting seeing as Patriot was the protégé of the late Steve Rogers. Next to Patriot was another black teen that was even taller with broad shoulders and bulging muscles wearing a modern yellow and black combat suit, Ms Marvel saw the yellow and realised now why Victor Alvarez had chosen the title of Power Man, the colours were a tribute to legendary hero who was held that name. There was very excited looking brunette girl dressed in a pink bodysuit with a white trench coat stood beside Wasp that Ms Marvel knew all too well, she had fought this girl on multiple occasions, her codename was Bombshell and she used to be a D list villain, usually using her explosive powers to rob convenience stores and smash up ATMs but recently with the help of Spiderman the mutant had been on the straight and narrow and as part of her parole program she could do good work with The Champions. There were two students from the Xavier academy who were huddled together, one was a short girl with a few scars over her smiling face, she was wearing a yellow hoodie with the red 'X' emblem on it with her looking so happy it was hard for Ms Marvel to figure how Honey Badger was related to the grumpy and gruff Wolverine. The other X academy student was an afghan girl in her late teens, she was wearing a black niqab and around her waist was a utility belt with 'X' emblem serving as the buckle, the heroine Dust had been with the X Men for a couple of years so it made Ms Marvel wonder why she wanted to jump ship to another team. Sat on a thick tree branch above the heroes was a girl wearing a suit of red and gold armour with a matching helmet with bug antennae attached, Locust's look matched her insect codename. And finally there was the recruit who had been begging to join The Champions for over six months, a Indian boy who looked barely in his teens but his age was the most notable thing, it was green hair that seemed to glow, Ms Marvel was curious to see how Pinpoint would benefit the team.

Ms Marvel realised she had been silent for over ten seconds but remained composed as she opened the conversation "Thanks for coming, I know some of you have travelled a long way but I'm happy that you're all considering joining our team. But before we start gauging your skills I need to give you a warning. If you want to just beat up bad guys this is the wrong team for you, if you think a mission is too small for someone of your power then you're on the wrong team. The Champions are independent team free of government control but that doesn't mean we act like outlaws, our team's main objective is humanitarian not crime fighting, we specialise in rescue missions and when there isn't a hostage situation or natural disaster happening we help with community projects worldwide, from building schools to helping out in soup kitchens. So if you want fame or to fight big bads, then apply for The Avengers or the future foundation but The Champions always puts the lives of innocents first. If anyone wants to walk away now, know that you will not be judged."

When no one budged, Ms Marvel just smiled "Good, now let's see what you're made of."

Across the city, in the middle of the Hudson river was the floating prison known as The Raft. In the darkest depths of the artificial island there was a red haired man looking through a two way mirror at a monster in its cage. The monster was Victor Von Doom, now free of the night howler toxin but also ripped from his armour and had been branded with a mark that severed his connection to the magical forces of the multiverse. He was sat at the table in his old fashioned barred cell, dressed in white prisoner jumpsuit reading a book. There was six machine gun turrets on him at all times, there were charms and magic glyphs etched into the adamantium cell bars to prevent anyone teleporting in on any magic being performed in a hundred foot radius. The red haired man chuckled darkly "How the mighty have fallen, he was always an arrogant prick."

"Sir, we really shouldn't be here, the prisoner you asked to see is down the hall." The pompous sounding warden reminded the well dressed red haired man.

The man who looked to be in his fifties was in a tailor made suit and holding a large shock proof briefcase just turned to Warden and replied with a creepy smile "Lead the way, warden."

The Warden, flanked by two heavily armed guards led the red haired man to a row of cells which were designated for prisoners who were classed as A-level criminals "Prisoner Z1EG is in the cell at the end of the corridor." The warden instructed.

The red haired man just nodded at the warden before making his way down the corridor of cells, all of which had single occupants and were made of extremely thick bulletproof glass. The man glanced at the other prisoners on the way and recognised a mask-less Task Master and a slumbering Kraven but they didn't concern him. He already had eyes on his target, she was on the floor of her cell doing push ups with her remaining arm, her white hair was greasy and tangled and when she heard footsteps approaching her golden eyes shot up to see who was coming but she saw just another suit she carried on with her push ups. "So are you a shrink, a lawyer or the guy sent to kill me?" Ronin panted, continuing her exercises.

"None of the above, Mrs Kirabito." The Red haired man answered, looking at the assassin with critical gaze.

"If you're a priest, rabbi or imam, forget it, I'm not the religious type." Ronin grunted, standing up and grabbing a towel to wipe away the sweat from her brow.

"I just saw your old employer down the hall, old Victor is looking rather pathetic these days." The Man brought up.

Ronin froze up a little before hissing " _Merde,_ the rumours are true then, he is on the raft." the swordswoman subconsciously stroking her stump, wondering how long it would be before Doom got to her.

"Out of curiosity, how many of your fellow inmates have already tried to kill you?" The man asked.

"Four, all of them are dead now. I just got of solitary this morning, but you already knew that." Ronin answered, trying to figure out who the suit was and what was his angle.

"I did and I'm glad you've still got your fighting spirit despite the loss of both your arm and your wife." The Man responded, not intimidated by Alice's glare upon the mention of her wife.

"And why are you so concerned about my fighting spirit?" Ronin simmered.

The man replied by opening the briefcase he was holding and presenting the contents to Ronin, inside was a weaponized prosthetic arm.

Ronin looked at the arm and smelled a way out of the raft, she looked the man in the eyes and replied "A lovely gift but who is it from?"

The man then smiled "My name's Norman Osbourne and I have a little team where you can work off your sentence."

Away from the grimness of The Raft there was another nearby facility for holding criminals, but these were not prisoners they were patients. In Bellevue mental health hospital there was room that had been brightened up by old photographs in frames, posters and even flowers. There were two ginger women sat a table with a chessboard between them while armed guards were stood outside the room like sentinels. "It's your move." Lu prompted, leaning back in her chair, she was dressed in pink pyjamas and wore a patient wristband as well as a power inhibitor collar.

"Ugh, why did I suggest I play chess with you? You always beat me at it when we were younger." Robbie groused, the mechanic moving her knight in a move she wasn't sure would work.

"Because you've always been super competitive." Lu smiled at her baby sister, before moving one of her bishops "And checkmate."

Robbie looked at the board and realised she was defeated before sighing "It's been a decade and you still rule at this."

"Well I've been practising with my psychologists, Dr. Thrash says I'm a lot more open when I'm playing chess or practising my violin." Lu replied, setting the pieces back to their staring positions.

"Dr. Thrash?" Robbie scoffed "That's got be a nickname...anyway how's therapy going?"

"It's going ok," Lu answered with a tired voice, playing with her freshly braided hair (courtesy of Robbie) "but 'She' showed up during one of my sessions the other day."

"Are you ok? Did she do anything?" Robbie asked, gently taking hold of Lu's hands.

"No, I didn't give her the chance, I got back control within half a minute, Dr. Thrash wanted to continue but I said it was best to sedate me before she hurt anyone." Lu admitted.

"It'll be a long road, but we'll get control of this whole thing one day." Robbie comforted.

"The trial's going to be hell, I can just picture 'Her' acting up while I'm being cross examined." Lu worried "I don't get why they just don't hand me a life sentence now and get it over with."

"Luna, you weren't in control, if we can prove that you could be released into my custody." Robbie willed.

Lu shook her head "Too risky, I just want to keep everyone safe. Honestly, I'm just fine having you visit twice a week."

"Well I've been given passes for Hannah and Aaron to visit next week in the family room, so that's something to look forward to." Robbie gave a small smile.

"I can't believe you're married and have a kid, I can't wait to meet my nephew." Lu said, she had been excited to meet the little boy ever since seeing a photo of him on Robbie's phone.

"But I did get a few more visitor passes, for today actually." Robbie said out of the blue.

Lu looked at the door with alarm and asked in a quiet voice "What do you mean more passes?"

"I didn't want to overwhelm you if you were having a bad day, so that's why I suggested we play chess to see how well you were feeling." Robbie explained "They're waiting right outside."

"Who is it?" Lu asked, eyes locked on the door.

"You know who it is. Is it ok if they come in?" Robbie asked, still holding Lu's hand.

Lu gripped Robbie's hand for comfort and mental strength then just nodded.

Robbie in turn looked to the two way mirror near the door and said "Come on, it's ok."

The sound of the door unlocking made the hairs on Lu's arms stand on end, the first person she saw was the armoured SHIELD guard but then he stepped aside and in the doorway there were fice very familiar faces that Luna had longed to see but now she was seeing them she had no words to say, she stood up from the small table and looked at her family. Nick and his three sons; Ryan, Ronan and Reggie all towered over the petit Judy, who's grey hair was cut really short, her amethyst eyes moist with tears, she looked like she was about to say something but instead she darted over and hugged her step daughter tightly, bawling her eyes out.

It's only when she felt the comforting embrace that Lu wept "Mom." and hugged her back.

Nick then joined the hug whispering through his tears "We missed you baby girl." then kissing his eldest child on the cheek.

The quadruplets then completed the hug, all of them saying messages of love and support for their big sister. The future was uncertain for Lu, but she didn't care, as long as she was locked up so was Andi and she knew that her family would always be there for her.

000

This was the 22nd time that the Wildes and Savages had journeyed to Bunnyburrow for Christmas. This was the second of two annual trips, the first being during the summer's Carrot Days festival but this year was extra special because there were six new family members arriving on the train from Zootopia. Newborn kits were a common sight on the Hopps homestead, every month a member or two of the huge family would increase the clan size with a new litter but it was the first instance in the family of a lesbian couple using a sperm donor to have a litter and an another queer couple adopting a koala into the family, adoptions were pretty common in the Hopps family to but it had always been bunnies.

Aaron was embracing being part of such a massive family, all the other kids wanted to play with him, the adults fawned over him and the farm was such a fun place to play. But the sun had just set on Christmas eve and it was an excuse to send the hundreds of kids off to bed early to avoid being skipped by Santa but before Aaron was tucked into bed his great grandma Bonnie insisted on a photo. Aaron was sat in front of the Christmas tree in the living room with Alice and Luna's tiny kits all swaddled in his arms "Aww, now that's a sweet picture." Bonnie cooed, showing Robyn and Luna the photo on the digital camera's screen.

"The babies have their awesome big cousin looking after them." Luna gushed, knowing she would have this photo as her desktop wallpaper.

"Ok little hero, time for bed." Hannah said, crouching down and taking Heather and Victoria out of Aaron's arms.

"But Mom, it's only seven o'clock." Aaron pouted.

"And it's Christmas eve, we don't know when Santa will drop by but if there any kids awake well he'll just fly right over the farm." Robyn added, feeding Aaron the same words that Judy had told her when she was five.

"It's true, Aaron. I stayed up with my brothers and sisters one Christmas eve and in the morning we hadn't a single present." Stu harmlessly lied, taking hold of his namesake baby Stuart from Aaron's arms.

Aaron eyes went wide in alarm "Really?" he gasped.

"Same thing happened to me back in Sherwood." Nick piled on, getting up from his chair with a storybook in hand "Now come on, I promised you and the other kids in your room I'd read you a story before bed."

Alice took Sayame and John as Aaron got up and gave a hug and a kiss to all the adults in the room, giving an extra long hug to his Moms before being scooped up by Nick. "What room is he in again?" Nick asked as he headed out the front door.

"Bunkhouse seven, room nine." Bonnie remembered, the Hopps matriarch had memorized each and every child's bedroom for the get together.

Stu relaxed into his armchair, cradling Stuart and looked at Jack, Skye and Judy who were chilling by the fireplace "So how does it feel to be grandparents?" The early eighties buck asked.

"Bliss." Skye answered honestly.

"We've only got to worry about one grandkid, poor Nick and Judy have had six land all at once." Jack commented, supping on some bourbon.

"You make it sound like a burden, these little angels are no trouble, even if they are crying pooping machines." Judy joked.

"Alice sweetheart, I hope Luna's pulling her weight with all the feeding and diaper changing." Bonnie fussed.

"Grandma." Luna huffed.

"Luna's has been the perfect mother, Bonnie, I promise." Alice assured, cuddling up next to the vixen while gently rocking Sayame and Victoria.

Robyn was about to comment on the babies when she noticed that Hannah had passed the kits she had been holding onto Judy and had gone into the kitchen. The hybrid followed her wife when she heard the back door to the yard open and close, Robyn found Hannah sat on the back porch with a fresh beer can in her paw. "You doing ok, babe?" Robyn asked, sitting down beside her.

"It's weird, even though I can't see I know my parents and yours are looking at me with disappointment." Hannah lamented quietly before taking a glug of larger.

"It's not like that." Robyn comforted.

"Isn't it? My Mom chewed me out pretty bad on the train ride here, Dad had to intervene and get her to back off. And I can tell that Nick and Judy are still mad with me." Hannah informed.

"We knew this trip would be hard but we can't let the family tradition be interrupted by something that'll be fixed in time." Robyn said with a hopefully.

"You're still mad with me." Hannah stated.

"...Yeah." Robyn answered reluctantly but she took Hannah's spare paw and traced it over her wedding band "But I wouldn't have got this reforged if my anger was all that mattered, look my rage will die down, we'll work through our issues and I know we'll come out of this stronger. I love you."

"I love you, too." Hannah conceded, leaning in and hoping for a kiss which she got.

Robyn noticed that when she kissed Hannah she didn't feel any negative emotions, it's as if all the problems just washed away, she felt the same way when they were together with Aaron and she knew that the love in her heart would outshine the darkness of anger. The kiss ended and Hannah rested her head on Robyn's shoulder, Robyn held her striped bride close and looked up at the starry night sky with hope.

 **THE END**

(AN/ After 3 stories, 140 chapters, over 828,000 words, over 4000 reviews, hundreds pieces of art, half a dozen spin offs and a new irl D&D group born from this series it's finally done. Thank you readers for taking your time to read my crazy take on what happened after Zootopia, including a massive genre shift and my terrible grammar and spelling skils thanks to my dyslexia. Thank you for all the support, you're all amazing and supported me and the team when we were attacked by trolls. But now I want to thank some special people...

Chelsea: You're the most brutally honest woman I know and a great friend, you gave this story Esso, one of the break out stars of this fic! You're amazing and I can't wait to read your spin off featuring everyone's favourite Lynx.

Charles: You entered the team as a fan but you rose through the ranks and by the time the 3rd story came you had created Arthur Knight and already a spin off ready. You my dude, are a brilliant friend, it'll be great to read your fic and It'll be awesome to see you again at London Comic Con

Senny and Lis: The cutest couple. Senny you gave me the first ever piece of Take a Stand fan art, which I still have it! But even better you created Aleks Rojek! And Lis with your OC Zoe, you brought much colour and humour to this fic series. Thank you and i wish you all the happiness.

Boehm: You are the moral compass of the dev team and you come up with the craziest ideas that actually make sense. You're awesome dude! Keep up with the writing!

Zieg: Creator of Alice Kirabito and an astonishing artist who I have had the privilege of watching his skills evolve from pencil sketches to full epic digital art pieces. The master of small details and always humble, Zieg the Take a Stand series would've never been as popular as it was if your art wasn't the face of the story, you brought the highs and lows of these characters to life and I will forever be in your debt. Thank you, my friend.

Oggie: You always make me laugh, you big old furry. Keep being awesome.

Ortiz: Another artist who brought their love of comics and zootopia to this story and created some of the most badass artwork the series ever had. Like Zieg, you've evolved from pencil sketches to form your own unique comic book style. Thank you dude.

Ice Cream: I'll always remember those first artworks you made of Robyn and Hannah as Ruby and Sapphire and NOW i look at your art and all i feel is amazement, your art skills have grown so much and you've brought your amazing skills to this series. Thank you.

Alana: Even though your time with the team was short, your ideas, your comics of the TAS characters and your oc Alana will always be treasured.

HelTheHatter: In my personal opinion, YOU are the greatest zootopia fanfic writer in the fandom and thank you for allowing me to use your ocs Kodi, Sasha and Wade.

Special thanks also to OceRydia, Villager, SpookyYena, SuperCanadianRobin, ReekyRiq, If-You-Want-To-Get-Out-Alive, Crystal Master, J. , FuzzyWuzzyLittleTail, Otakurec, Shadowed-Visitor and so many others. Thank you. Please review and c ya soon...

OH! And one more thing there will be a series of TAS one shots coming from me called Take A Stand Tales! Ok, bye.)


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